


Where They Never Say Your Name

by rapacityinblue



Series: Where They Never Say Your Name [3]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Chaptered, Gen, M/M, Multi, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:56:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapacityinblue/pseuds/rapacityinblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next job brings back a little too much of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coke and Gin

**coke and gin;**  
(part one) ****

* * *

They walked right into the trap. The Lockshaw job was money good enough to make Eames whistle, even after what they'd made on inception. One of those jobs where everything fell into place. Their subject had a pattern, a highly repetitive schedule that took him through a wide variety of social interactions and left him completely open to being tailed. There were plenty of opportunities to make a grab, and the extraction didn’t even require force. It was all too perfect. Eames had gotten this far listening to his instincts; he wasn’t stupid enough to suggest turning them off now.

Arthur found it, of course. They were well into prep for the job, but no one had gone under yet. It was his job to find these things. Eames knew Arthur would accept nothing less than perfection from himself. "I'm sorry," Arthur said. Words Eames had only heard from him three time in total. "I should have found this sooner."

Arthur took responsibility for his mistakes, which was a quality Eames admired in him. (It was also one he made a point of never emulating.) As it happened, though, Arthur could also be incredibly hard on himself. It was happening now, and it was a quality of which Eames most certainly did not approve.

"Darling, we haven't even gone under yet," he pointed out practically. Arthur _had_ found it, which, given the way Eames usually worked, was heads above what he usually hoped for. That line of logic, he thought, was unlikely to get him anywhere. "So. Trap, then?"

"I'm afraid so." Arthur said unhappily. "The financials for the corporation Lockshaw's supposed to be designing for lead back to a dummy front. If the company isn't real, whatever we're supposed to be stealing --"

"Doesn't exist, hm?" Eames finished.

"Maybe the client didn't want to tell us what they're really after?" Ariadne asked. Her face, usually pretty, pursed into a frown.

"Not exactly the kind of client you hope for, in our line of work," Eames said.

"If the client isn't reliable, I cannot take this job.” That was Kensuke, their chemist. His words were clipped by his faint accent, his voice soft and unassuming. Eames liked him. He wasn’t Yusef, but he kept his head down and did his part.

"What?" Ariadne looked like she might explode. Her cheeks were flushed red and she crossed her arms over the tails of her scarf. "You can't just --"

"Of course he can," Arthur said, cutting her off. "Eames is right; the job's barely started. Nothing's decided yet." He added something on in Japanese that Eames couldn't follow, but it made Kensuke nod and bend over his desk. He began to pack his things away, which was enough to dismiss him from Eames’s attention. He looked back to Arthur, who ran his fingers through his hair and leaned back in his chair. Only his toes braced against the ground. "I'm sorry," he said again. "It's such an obvious trail. I should have found it sooner."

It wasn't obvious at all. It was the kind of thing that another point man might have missed. Hell, Eames had done entire jobs without any point man at all, winging it on his own research and guesswork. Not his preferred way to work, and their current situation was a splendid example of _why._ Arthur's thoroughness had, once again, saved them quite a lot of pain. 

He kept that thought behind his teeth. Voicing it would bog them all down in an argument of who should have caught what, and when. Better to forge ahead with what they had. Point man or no, Eames preferred the direct approach when there were this many questions yet to be answered. He could think of a dozen off the top of his head -- his mind was going now, turning over what they knew and looking underneath it for missed clues. "You ran a background on our employer, Arthur, yeah?" he asked, coming over to stand behind the point man's chair.

"Not deep enough, obviously," Arthur murmured, so dark and quiet that Eames might have missed it if he hadn't been leaning over the other man's shoulder. Eames snorted as Aradne came over to join them.

"I don't understand," she said. "What do we do now?"

"We keep going," Arthur’s eyebrows went up, an expression that on anyone else would look surprised. On him, it just read as bland. He twisted to look at her.

"But if you know it's a trap --"

"Only one way to find out who set it, pet!" Eames slung an arm around her shoulder. Arthur nodded in agreement.

"If we drop out, whoever set it will know they've been made," Arthur said. 

"Might lead to something less pleasant," Eames added. “Better to let them think they’re still in control.” 

"You, of course, are free to go at any time, Ariadne. There was real concern in Arthur's eyes. Eames saw it and wasted a moment feeling jealous.

"Don't be stupid, " Ariadne snapped. "I said I was in --"

Arthur was the kind of person who expected people to do their job. It wasn’t trust, exactly, but Eames saw the way he took Ariadne’s word, squared the issue, and moved on. Eames would bet he was already flipping through his mental rolodex, thinking of other chemists he trusted enough to call.

"I've some favors it may be time to call in," Arthur said, already reaching for the phone.

"Careful not to use them too early, darling," Eames said. Arthur turned his head just enough to give him a tight look.

But those calls weren’t going very well. Barely an hour went by and Eames could see it as he watched Arthur thumb the touchscreen of his phone yet again. Gone were the more satisfying days when you could slam a phone back into its cradle. 

Eames felt, more than saw Ariadne moving up beside him. He didn’t have to look to see the indignation written across her face. He’d been reading people for longer than Ariande had been badly disguising her emotions.

"How could he just leave like that? How could you let him?" she asked, without preamble, without trying to work around to what had her panties really bunched up. Fair enough. You rummaged around in someone’s head, eventually, you were bound to find what made them twisty inside.

"Kensuke's a good chemist, darling, a prize fish in a very small pond. No use in going burning bridges in this business, or you'll run out of folk to work with." Eames flipped a poker chip across his knuckles, his eyes locked on Arthur.

Arthur would have made a blistering comments about cliche and mixed metaphors. Ariadne only said, "So I guess it's true, then. There's no honor among thieves."

He watched Arthur hang up the cell phone with an almost vicious tap.  
"Only some of them, pet." '

* * *

Sometime after dinner, Arthur sent Ariadne home. He hadn't sent Eames on, but he assumed the other man was long gone as well. He was, after an adult. Capable of setting his own hours. In theory. 

There was a certain silence that settled over the warehouse when it was empty. When that peace was disturbed by rustle (just behind him and on his left, his weaker, side) he was well enough trained that he didn’t jump out of his suit. His shoulders tensed, and once he identified the disturbance, he put conscious effort into relaxing again.

"Didn't mean to bother you, darling," Eames said. He leaned his hip to Arthur's desk, his palms curling over the edge.

"You didn't," Arthur said, trying like hell to make himself believe it so that the words would carry some weight. It wasn't Eames's presence, exactly, that was upsetting to him. He'd thought he was alone. He didn't like being wrong. He didn't like his boundaries being crossed. He didn't like not knowing that they had been.

Despite his best efforts, Eames didn't look particularly convinced. Arthur stifled a flare of frustration, turning back to his laptop. He'd been working for hours, now, trying to chase down the fake trail of financials that had first tipped him off. It was maddeningly bad -- or good, he supposed, depending on perspective. It was all faked, and not even exceptionally well. There should be a trail. Even the worst front came from somewhere. 

There was nothing. Someone had built this thing without leaving any trace of himself, and it shouldn't have been possible.

"Take a break," Eames said.

"Go home," he threw back, which only made Eames tip his head back and laugh.

There wasn't anything particularly funny about it. Arthur gritted his teeth but refrained from commenting, knowing that anything he said now would only egg Eames on.

After a long moment, Eames’s laughter trailed off, and he boosted himself up, settling on a pile of paperwork that Arthur had put aside hours ago. He tugged them from under Eames's hip with a glare, smoothing out the wrinkles before placing them into a file. He wanted to punch the smirk off of Eames's lips, but he settled for flexing his fingers, once, before turning away.

"So. Found anything?" Eames asked.

He hadn't, and he knew that was what really had him on edge. Eames's inadequacies, Arthur thought ruefully, would never be as irritating to him as his own. And like hell was he sharing that thought. The last thing he needed was Eames rummaging further inside his head. Instead, he said, "The company isn't a front. It's decades old, relatively small, not international; it doesn’t catch a lot of attention. But this revenue stream -- it's entirely separate from the legal one. It’s set up through a different bank, and _that_ bank was only established last month. But I’ve got supposed records go back years."

"Hasty," Eames remarked, flipping through a moleskine. Arthur plucked it from his grasp, settling it back on its stack. Eames, completely unbothered, continued, "Must have fingerprints all over it."

"You would think that, but it's clean. It's _spotless_ ," Arthur groused.

Another notebook in his hands, Eames paused, raising the suede cover to his lips. "There is a point -- and I'm not saying that we're there yet, mind, but let us not forget that it does exist -- where it is not impermissible to ask for help."

That had to be meant as a criticism. Arthur felt his shoulders stiffen again. “And when we reach that point, Mr. Eames, I assure you I will,” he said tightly. He turned to face the other man, leaning forward in his chair as though he were readying for a fight.

Eames did the same, but Arthur read his body language as earnest, not hostile, as he leaned forward. “Call Dom,” Eames said, low, urging. “The man owes you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Arthur’s response came automatically, a sort of numbness spreading over him. “Dom has a family to care for, Eames, and he’s retired. I won’t drag him into this.”

“Call Saito, then!” Eames said.

“Saito’s a business man. He hired us for a job and we did it. As far as he’s concerned, any business between us is done, and I’m sure he’d rather keep it that way.” Arthur could feel them both dancing around the issue, the words that weren’t being said. He wanted to point out that the trap could have been laid for Ariadne. It could have been laid for Kensuke, and, as he was gone, could no longer be a problem. It could very well have been laid for Eames. The man did not, exactly, make a habit of building good references with his clientele.

It could have been laid for any of them, but it wasn’t. Both of them knew it, and neither of was willing to say so. Not in so many words, which was why Eames pushed into his space and almost whispered, “Arthur, you’ve got to call _someone._ ”

“I called you,” Arthur said. He was proud of the way his voice remained calm as he pushed back to maintain the distance between them. “For a job. Are you saying you can’t do the job?”

“I can do the job.” Eames pulled back, sliding with his normal lack of grace until his feet hit the floor. He crossed his arms over his chest -- closing himself off, Arthur noticed, although it was something he’d learned from a seminar, he didn’t know how it really carried over -- and resumed his position with his hip braced against the desk.

“Good, then,” Arthur said, toeing himself around and back to his computer.

Eames didn’t leave. Maybe he was staying for the sake of sheer perversity; Arthur didn’t know anymore. His weight was solid against the desk, too close in Arthur’s peripheral vision. He forced himself to ignore the other man’s proximity and focus instead on the spreadsheets before him.

“Well then,” Eames said, his voice heavier with irony than Arthur had heard it in a long time. “How shall we proceed, darling?” He said the endearment the way Arthur remembered saying ‘sir’ in basic. The look Arthur gave him in return was cutting. The answer hadn’t changed.

“We do the job.”

* * *

Eames entered the warehouse the next morning feeling both underslept and unlucky. While neither was a particularly unusual feeling for him, today they attacked in concert. He’d stayed at the warehouse well past midnight last night, making a fool of himself. That he hadn’t heard about it yet was the one small blessing to come out of last night’s incredibly stilted conversation.

His mood didn’t improve any when he saw that Arthur was still at his desk in precisely the same position as he’d held when Eames had left off trying to reason with him.They were charging full-speed into a cobra’s nest, and Arthur wasn’t taking the time to sleep.

Well, fine. If he wanted to get himself killed, it wasn’t Eames’s lookout. He’d shared his bit with the class. As long as Arthur didn’t let his obsession drag them down with him. 

“I think I’ve got something.” Arthur’s hair was rumpled from having his fingers dragged through it, the normally neat strands hanging over his forehead and ears. Eames raised an eyebrow, but brought a chair over, sitting backwards over it as he’d seen Arthur do before.  
.  
Ariadne joined them a minute later, her hair falling in lovely, soft waves that emphasized the youth in her bone structure. He’d have to remind her not to wear her hair that way, if she wanted to be taken seriously in the business. “A chemist?” she asked.

“No,” Arthur said, with a frown so brief that Eames almost missed it. “Not yet. No, this is about our client.”

Arthur had set the job up, bringing each of them in. Arthur was the only one to speak to their client -- or perhaps “staking horse” would be a more appropriate title. Arthur was probably the only one who could unravel the mess he’d made.

Eames watched as Arthur stood, his sleeves rolled up to the bend of his elbow. He had set up a large whiteboard off to one side of his station, and he taped a photo of a severe-looking woman to it. The photographer, Eames thought, had really captured her, assuming she was a cold-mouthed bitch.

“This is Avery Manns,” Arthur said, crossing his arms over his slender chest. “At least, that’s the name she gave me. I think we can assume that it’s fake.”

“Brilliant. That clears everything up, then,” Eames said, sending the other man a look that should communicate his feelings on the matter. _Get to the point._

Arthur stopped for a moment, glaring back at him, until Ariadne cleared her throat, cutting through the silence. Thank god someone had, because it jolted Arthur back to what he was saying. “Right. The job was supposed to be on James Lockshaw. CEO of Mercalis Industries.”

Ariadne made a polite noise in the back of her throat. Eames heaved a heavy sigh. “Darling, are you going to tell us anything we don’t already know?” he asked dryly. There were several ways, of course, to get information out of Arthur, but only one made him turn delightful shades of red as he grew more angry.

Only this time, he didn’t. Arthur didn’t send so much as a single piercing glance his way. He did, at least, direct the remainder of his words to Ariadne alone, which Eames supposed he could enjoy as a victory. “Mercalis is real, and Lockshaw really is its CEO, that’s how it got past me at first. But the revenue streams we were being sent in to investigate --”

“The drug money?” Ariadne interrupted, tucking her hair behind her ears.

“Drugs, weapons -- that money had to have come from somewhere. It’s completely apart from Lockshaw’s other income. Separate accounts, entirely separate banks, never reported for taxes --”

Eames had read as much in Arthur’s moleskine last night. He actually did pay attention, despite what the point man thought. He just saw no reason not to enjoy himself in the process. “All of which is consistent with ill-gotten gains,” he said. 

“It would be, if the accounts were Lockshaw’s. Or anyone who worked at Mercalis’s. Or if they even existed. But these accounts have supposed activity on them longer than they’ve existed. And there’s no tie to Mercalis. No one who knew Lockshaw withdrew or deposited in the accounts. Why use aliases to create accounts and deposit money in his name?” 

“But if it’s really illegal, he wouldn’t want it in his name, right?” Ariadne was chewing on her lip. “I mean, he’d use a front or an untraceable account.”

“And if it were legitimate, why falsify a paper trail? I think Manns, whoever she is, used Mercalis as a front. She’s close enough to the company to make it convincing,” Arthur said.

“Right!” Eames clapped his hands together. “Good enough to start. Tell us, darling, who’ve you pissed off recently with ties to Mercalis?”

Ariadne frowned. “How do we know they want Arthur? Couldn’t they just be after one of us?”

He had to give her points, it was a reasonable question. “Certainly, in this line of work,” Eames drawled. “Who’ve you pissed off recently with ties to Mercalis, Ariadne?”

Arthur sent him a quelling glare and cut in, “It’s unlikely, alright? They came to me. Maybe they’d guess I’d bring you and Eames in, or anyone else, but it’s not likely. I’ve worked with a lot of people and I don’t always use the same team. That’s a lot of fishing.”

“Plus,” Eames couldn’t not add, “our darling Arthur has spent the last two years of his life trailing after one Dominick Cobb. Those jobs all went swimmingly, didn’t they?”

“Eames,” Arthur said.

“All I’m saying is that no one feels right ordering a hit on the nut job, so they look for a less guilt-inducing target,” Eames said. Arthur sighed.

“Can we _focus?_ ” Eames made an elaborate half-bow, indicating he should continue.

Arthur turned to the whiteboard, tapping the cap of the marker against his lips. Finally, he leaned up and wrote ‘Cobol’ across the top. Eames’s eyebrow went up. “Hasn’t Saito taken care of that little problem for you?”

“There’s only so much he can do, if someone’s holding a grudge,” Arthur pointed out.

“What about Fischer?” Ariadne offered, and Arthur added it to the board. Eames snorted, not bothering to hide his opinion. It drew a look from her.

“Oh, it’s possible, darling, but he doesn’t remember us.”

“It’s a defense mechanism,” Arthur put in, in response to Ariadne’s surprised look. “The way you never quite remember the details of a dream once you’re awake. He might remember us from the plane, but all that should have stuck from the job is just those feelings. The mind rationalizes them. Makes them less raw, more palatable. Fischer doesn’t know what we did.”

“Freud was onto something with his theory of the super-ego. Assuming we did our jobs right,” Eames agreed.

Ariadne’s face pulled into a knot around her nose, her brow adorably scrunched. “Saito knows. What about him?” she asked, and Eames felt a glow of approval warming his chest. Most people would have dismissed the businessman as a satisfied customer. Especially the innocent little architect they’d taken in at the beginning of inception. In Eames’s experience, though, anyone willing to hire you was willing to double-cross you after.

Arthur seemed to feel the same. “It’s possible,” he said, adding Saito’s name to the list. “It just doesn’t seem his style.”

“I think you’ll find styles change, darling, once you’ve got a man up against a wall.” Eames didn’t bother to disguise a leer, and was rewarded by the point man exaggeratedly rolling his eyes. “Who else?”

It only took fifteen minutes for them to get as many names on the board. “You work fast, darling, don’t you?” Eames asked. Once again, he felt that warm swelling in his chest -- something like pride, he thought, and also, maybe, a distinct flavor of ‘they grow up so fast.’ Ariadne, sitting beside him, was making vague noises of disbelief in her throat. 

“I have a very specialized skill set,” Arthur responded, his tone almost cheerful, and Eames didn’t disagree.

“You forgot Istanbul,” Eames said. “What was her name again?”

“God. Montgomery. I’d worked quite hard to forget about her,” Arthur said, with the quick scratch of his pen against the board. “Ariadne, are you alright?”

“I just don’t get why anyone would want to hurt you!” she said, her eyes wide, and Eames turned his gaze from her to Arthur -- who was looking very much like he’d swallowed a live fish. Whole.

Their eyes met, over her head, and the next fifteen minutes were spent as she alternated between hitting each of them on their arms, and they did their best to get their laughter under control.

* * *

The whiteboard was taunting him. Looming over his shoulder as he tried to work. The heavy ceramic coffee mug beside him was cold, leaving unfortunate brown rings on the report he’d been preparing for Manns. All things considered, that might not matter so much now.

Usually, Arthur was able to tune out the noises of whatever work space they’d found. The best had been an almost finished housing development in Colorado, one that had lost its funding in the economy. An empty house surrounded by blocks of empty houses. It had just been him, Cobb, and a chemist they’d picked up somewhere; he didn’t remember where, exactly, but she’d died four jobs later and been relegated to Arthur’s mental file of things it was acceptable to forget. But that house -- each of them had had their own “office”, complete with walls around it and honest-to-God sound muffling carpeting on the floor.

The warehouse was a less comfortable environment, but he did well enough. There was just a certain type that went into dreamsharing. You didn’t get very far if you weren’t willing to pull your weight. Even Eames, who had the highest capacity for inane chatter of anyone Arthur had ever met, could lose himself in research. The shouts and laughter that might have echoed through the cavernous locker, making it impossible to work, faded instead to the quiet hum of low-voiced conversation, typing, and occasionally, pen on paper. Working conditions had never been a problem for Arthur -- at least, not until they were under, with Dom half crazed and Mal breathing down their necks.

Arthur knew he was the best point man in the business. He’d worked hard to make sure everyone else knew it, too. It reminded him of something Eames had once said, two levels down in yet another high-rise of Arthur’s subconscious making, casting his eyes from the neat, high corners of the room to the sharp lines of the furniture. “You really are all squared away, aren’t you?” He was. He’d made damn well sure of it.

And then there was Mal. Arthur still couldn’t, after all these years, explain to himself why he’d followed Dom for so long. Loyalty and love only took a man so far in the dreamsharing business, and they both knew it. It wasn’t that he hadn’t loved Dom. He still loved all of them, Dom, Phillipa,James, and, god help him, Mal. “Who’s going to take care of my children, Arthur?” He could still hear her voice in his ear; the warmth of her chin over his shoulder, her cheek against his neck. “When he gets you both killed? Who will love my babies then?”

“I can’t leave him,” he’d said, knowing full well it was useless to argue with a projection. With this projection.

She’d shot him.

Every time, he’d promised himself he was done with Dom, and he’d tell him so. One more, to get things settled. And then Dom would be fine for a job, maybe two, less guilt stricken. More in control. And Arthur would convince himself the other man was healing. And then she’d come back.

It contradicted the man he’d made himself into. It hurt his reputation in the business. He was the best, but he was also Cobb’s. And now, his supposed fresh start --

Ariadne’s laugh broke through the silence of working professionalism, and he unclenched the fingers he hadn’t realized were wrinkling the thigh of his trousers.

His eyes strayed over to Ariadne’s desk. She was sitting at an angle to her models, her body open to Eames’s as he leaned over, one hand braced on the countertop, and whatever he was saying was making her laugh. He was _supposed_ to be coaching her on how to design an open ended layout they could adapt to fit whatever they ended up needing, once they found their actual target. Arthur pushed away the thoughts of Cobb, the sudden and irrational tightness in his chest, but couldn’t look away before Eames glanced up and caught his eyes.

“Arthur!” he called, in the same mocking drawl he always attached to Arthur’s name, dragging out the second syllable as if it were a joke. Arthur forced his jaw to relax.

“I think I found something,” he said, jerking his chin in the universal gesture for ‘come over here.’

The nice thing about working with competent, if annoying, people: Eames sauntered across the floor to look over his shoulder, and after a long moment of reading, gave a thoughtful, “Well, well, well,”. Arthur shifted away from the hot breath of air across his collar.

“What?” Poor Ariadne practically had to jump to see over the wall made by their bodies. She put hands on each of their shoulders as she braced herself to raise up to tiptoe, and without thinking much about it, Arthur reached out to put a hand on her hip and steady her.

“Looks like you were right, pet,” Eames told her, but his eyes were on Arthur, looking -- what, exactly? Arthur stared back, perfectly bland, waiting pointedly for him to voice whatever had him frowning that way, but Eames was either as incapable of reading Arthur as Arthur was of reading him, or he simply didn’t care.

“RPF Enterprises made a substantial donation to Mercalis in 2010 --” Ariadne said, reading the line of the spreadsheet he’d highlighted. “What’s RPF Enterprises?”

“Who,” Arthur corrected her. “Who is RPF Enterprises. Robert Peter Fischer Enterprises.”

“Ah.” Eames, it occurred to Arthur, was slightly unstable, if he made the same sound discovering a good piece of information as most people did when they tasted a fine wine. He pulled away and straightened, leaving Arthur suddenly cold. He rolled his cuffs down from his elbow without thinking much about it. Eames asked, “What is our dear friend Robert doing now, Arthur? Is he still in the energy business?”

“No longer. Infrastructure,” Arthur responded, and Eames gave him a shark-toothed  
grin he couldn’t not return.

“You mean roads and such?” Ariadne asked.

“I mean precisely roads and such,” Arthur said, still showing more teeth than was strictly necessary. “‘Such,’ as it happens, being mostly in the realm of reservoirs, aqueducts, retention facilities. Now, guess where.”

“Iraq,” Eames said promptly.

“I’ll give it to you. Afghanistan.”

Arthur heard Ariadne’s delighted gasp as the puzzle pieces fell into place for her too. “He’s got a defense contract.”

“That he does,” Eames agreed cheerfully, “And he gets positively ridiculous tax breaks for supporting small business, Arthur, doesn’t he?”

“It puts Mercalis neatly in his pocket,” Arthur agreed.

“Okay, so we’re saying it’s Fischer?” Ariadne asked.

“We’re saying it certainly looks like Fischer and we now have a game plan moving forward,” Arthur said. “He’s militarized, but this should be a fairly simple extraction. Just put him in an office with a safe and let him fill it up. We don’t even need to dig for the combination.”

“Okay,” Ariadne said again, looking between them. Eames, Arthur saw, was nodding along with him, but their architect looked unconvinced. “But we can’t go into Fischer’s mind.” 

Her comment seemed to halt the conversation, and Arthur looked over -- yes, Eames was every bit as confused as he was. “We can’t?” Eames asked for him. “As I recall, we did before, with some success.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Ariadne said. “And he saw us.”

Realizing that she was right was rather like being punched in the gut. From the look on Eames’s face, he felt the same. “It made sense before,” Arthur said slowly, sounding it out as if looking for a flaw in her logic. “We were faces from strangers on a plane. He’d seen us recently, and his subconscious plucked us to be the faces of his military projections.”

“But if he dreams about us again, when he hasn’t seen our faces for months--” Ariadne began, leadingly.

“And he associates us with Mr. Charles --” Arthur continued.

“We’ll draw too much attention,” she finished. “We’ll rile his projections up right from the beginning.”

It was almost painful to admit that Ariadne had seen what he’d missed. Painful, but also impressive. Once again, Arthur was reminded just how nice competence could be.

“Right, then,” Eames said. “I’ll go in. Forge someone -- less than an hour and it’s all bob’s your uncle.”

But Arthur pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “In a militarized subconscious, Eames?”

Eames’s lips quirked in response. “Yes, well, I do remember dear Robert’s subconscious. They weren’t the friendliest, I admit.”

“Fischer may be making a new man out of himself, but I doubt he’s doing it alone,” Arthur said. “There’s got to be someone close to him who would have what we need.”

Eames seemed to chew that thought over. “Preferably someone we can access quickly. Arthur, you’ve got the RPF Enterprises website there, haven’t you? Pull up the bios.”

Arthur looked to Eames with half an idea of where this was leading. “We destroyed that relationship during inception,” he said, but a few keystrokes later he had up the page Eames had asked for.

“Ah ah, we destroyed it in a dream. Super-ego, remember? He was still Robert’s godfather when the man woke up; you weren’t there when he swam out of that window. Hell, he practically pulled me from the van. There we go.” Eames grinned again as they followed the link through the executive tier to CFO. Peter Browning’s headshot was stern and sharp, translating neatly into the black and white layout of the website. Arthur could have happily shot the smug look off the forger’s face. “This job, I won’t even need to research for,” Eames laughed.

* * *

“Ariadne’s worried about you,” Eames said without preamble as he fell into the chair beside Arthur. This time, he let Arthur know he was there -- even though it was amusing to watch the man try not to jump. 

Over the last few hours, they’d cobbled together a hasty but solid plan. Get Eames alone with Browning. Go into his mind. Find out if they were right and Fischer had come after them. It was simple and decidedly inelegant. It solved nothing -- it was all reconnaissance, being hastily gathered, at that. Eames had a flight booked already and, once his suit was pressed, would be well underway. “Ariadne should worry about you,” Arthur said. “You’re the one taking Browning under.” 

“That may be true, darling, but I don’t look nearly as nice in a sweater vest,” Eames purred.

“That’s true.” Arthur’s voice betrayed a healthy level of self-esteem, and Eames watched him struggle to keep the corners of his lips down. Then the smile disappeared, and he said, “Listen. Browning. We need to talk about what you’re doing.”

This again. Eames rolled his eyes, not bothering to hide his disdain. He liked slapdash, but Arthur didn’t seem able to let it go. “Arthur, I didn’t just forge the man off an afternoon of crumpets together. Believe me, I have enough background on Browning for this. He’s got a niece he’s particularly fond of--”

Arthur pinched his nose, which Eames read as, ‘shut up and let me talk.’ So he did. “Eames, I don’t want to talk about your forge. I want to talk about Browning,” Arthur said. “I’ve got reason to believe he’s militarized.”

“Why? Because Fischer was?” Eames rolled his shoulders in his suit and laughed. It wasn’t a bad assumption, but it was a hell of a leap to make. Arthur cut him off, his words sharp.

“No. Because Dom did it.”

It would be fair to say that, at that point, things went to shit. Ariadne was there in 20 minutes, despite having left the warehouse only two hours ago, muttering about sleep. Eames hadn’t been exaggerating her concern for Arthur before. She was charmingly easy to read, and wouldn’t be going anywhere in the business if she didn’t learn to control her tells. Of course, as long as she was still willing to take breaks and play poker with him, he could wait a little longer to tell her as much.

Concerned or otherwise, she didn’t look thrilled at being hauled out of bed, and as far as Eames was concerned, that was fine. He wasn’t thrilled, himself with Arthur’s revelation.

“My favorite part is how you knew Browning was militarized, and you never thought to check Fischer.” He heard his own voice, rising both in pitch and volume. He hated yelling, hated the emotional investment that always accompanied it. Eames worked very hard to stay uninvested. He wasn’t even sure why he was still here. He didn’t tend to stay around when jobs went sticky on someone else’s watch, it happened too often on his own. Things went more smoothly when you could let them go, with no more displeasure than the sharp bite of sarcasm.

But this was different. It was Arthur, who was very close to yelling himself now, as he said, “Of course I checked Fischer! He was a child when Dom worked on Browning, Eames, it was years ago! Maurice Fischer never believed in extraction; he made his disdain for dreamsharing perfectly clear. There was no reason to believe he’d have his son militarized.”

It was a stupid thing to fight about and Eames knew it. The uncertainty of the last few days, the energy he’d spent playing it off for Arthur and Ariadne’s sake, that was what had him on edge and needing to snap. He knew he was only choosing this one mistake, well past, to focus on because he couldn’t vent his current frustrations.

Knowing why he was being irrational didn’t do much to help.

“You worked on him!” Eames shouted.

“Dom! Dom worked on him. We actually are separate people, and it would be nice if for once someone would remember that.”

“They might if--”

“Guys.” Ariadne cut in, which was probably for the best, as Eames sensed both of them  
were standing on the edge of a verbal cliff. “Eames, Arthur has found information you need and he’s telling you. That’s his job.”

“Thank you,” Arthur gritted out.

“Right.” Eames clamped down hard on the fury, clenching his hands until his nails bit against the skin of his palms. He let it drain from him, bleeding away with the tension in his shoulders.

“What about a chemist?” Ariadne said.

Arthur shook his head. His lips were still pressed into a tight line. “I tried. It looks like we’ll have to go this one alone. Yusuf is sending us a variety of Somnacin compounds but he isn’t willing to come into the field. Not this time.”

“Is that safe?” she asked.

“Both Arthur and I have worked with Somnacin long enough to do a few dreams. Yusuf’s compounds are good,” Eames said. It wasn’t exactly an answer, nor was it gracious, but it was the best he could rummage up at the moment. “I have a flight.”

“Eames --”

“Arthur, whatever you have to say to me, just -- leave a bloody message.”

The door closed with a little more force than was strictly necessary behind him.

* * *

Arthur stayed at his station long after Eames had left, staring down at his files without really seeing anything. There was nothing to work on, really; Eames would come back with information they needed, and that would set them in the right direction and he’d start looking from there. Until then, he would wait.

He hated being at loose ends.

Ariadne had returned to her desk, hunched over a maze and chewing on the end of a lock of hair. She’d been laughing a few hours before. Now she was silent, worried, as miserable as he was. With a sigh, Arthur rocked out of his chair and came to stand beside her, resting the heavy weight of one hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t like sending Eames off alone,” she said finally, staring at the maze. If this were a dream, she could shift it to match what she was envisioning. Arthur remembered that feeling, a time when he wanted, even when he knew he was awake, to be in a dream instead. He dropped a hand to his pocket, fingering the depressions of the marks of his die.

“It’s reconnaissance,” he answered flatly. “Eames has exactly the credentials he needs to get access to Browning’s office. He’s done it before. Ask for a private word, ten minutes alone, and he’ll be back on his way to us.”

It should be that simple. There was no reason for it not to be.

“I just don’t like him going alone,” she said. Arthur tried not to let her words stir up a feeling of dread within him. 

“Neither do I,” he said.

* * *

RPF Enterprises had a secondary office in Mumbai. That wasn’t surprising, given the cost of operations in America and overseas. He was sitting on a plane, coach, with his shoulders bumping the overweight business man’s next to him.

He’d spent most of the flight reviewing what he knew about Jason Andrews. Eames had never, in the entire course of his career, forgotten an alias. But he’d never re-used one, either, which means there were hundreds of Eameses piled up, lurking in the back of his head, as he liked to think of it.

Jason Andrews was a barrister from the Wales office of Belles and Sotheby. Belles and Sotheby was a local law firm Fischer Morrow had contracted to run their expansion into the UK. The fact that the Belles of Belles and Sotheby was an old secondary school mate of Eames’s lent him verisimilitude, and he was thankful enough to have the contract nudged his way that he hadn’t asked many questions when Eames had asked for a few pages of letterhead. Eames could have forged it all, of course, but he’d learned long ago that the right contacts to the real thing could stretch quite a bit further. Mr. Andrews had wrapped up his time at Fischer Morrow quite satisfactorily and, as it happened, was now out of work, his contract with that firm finished out.

He stepped off the plane, his fingers curling to tug at the cuffs of his suit. It was decent quality, but still off the rack, and a bit rumpled from his disgustingly long flight. Exactly what was expected of a youngish professional, still trying to balance the expenses of his new life with looming school debt. His beard was neatly trimmed, courtesy of a layover in the Netherlands, and he cleared customs without a second look, headed directly for the chauffeur holding up a sign that said “Andrews.”

The man led him to a town car idling outside the office, and he slid into the back seat beside the heavy-set greying man who occupied the seat beside him. “Mr. Andrews,” Peter Browning said, holding out a hand to him. Eames was careful to keep his grip steady, but not so strong that Browning felt he was losing control. It was all about the details with people. “I hope this isn’t too inconvenient for you, there were no other breaks in my schedule.” Browning said.

Amazing what a few phone calls could arrange.

Eames let his eyes stray to the privacy partition that separated them from the driver. It was opaque, painted matte black, and, he knew from Arthur’s research, soundproofed. None of that should matter, as he didn’t plan on making trouble. He’d be well finished by the time they navigated Mumbai’s regular traffic Just in case, however, another phone call had ensured that Browning’s regular driver had taken suddenly ill (one of those terrible bugs that plagued the locale, what could you do?) and had to be replaced.

“Mr. Browning,” Eames said with absolute sincerity as his fingertips slipped under the cuff of Browning’s jacket, “it’s a pleasure to meet with you.”

Eames liked simple and slapdash, because this plan, like most, was buggered all to hell in under fifteen minutes.

Eames had forged Browning before, which meant that he’d dug through every corner of the man’s past and present. Eames found it easier to become a man when he knew how that man had become himself. It also meant that he knew enough about Browning to passably forge his niece. She was the daughter of Browning’s brother, and living with her mum after the divorce, which meant that Browning didn’t see her as often as he wanted to. It had been months, now, and she was away at college, a place where young women were supposed to go and reinvent themselves. All that, added up, should have ensured that Eames had plenty of leeway to forge her properly, without Browning’s subconscious raising alarm bells if he wasn’t spot on.

Add to that, it wasn’’t even a difficult forge. Ariadne had built him a maze and he brought it into the dream as a five star restaurant. Browning’s projections threaded through tables, getting caught in the dead ends, milling around before turning on each other. In a moment of whimsy, Eames added holly and spruce boughs to the walls, festooning the tables with red velvet ribbon. He crossed his legs and leaned forward on his elbows, long blond hair brushing the tablecloth as Browning sat down across from his niece.

“Thanks for taking me out, Uncle Peter,” Eames said. “Sorry I can’t be here much longer.”

And then it all went to hell.

It was supposed to be simple. Peter Browning would hand her a box, a Christmas present, that his subconscious had filled with all the secrets Eames wanted. If that failed, the restaurant had a house safe, and Browning trusted his niece enough to leave her at the table while he went outside to take a phone call. Nice and easy, like he’d promised Arthur before things had gotten so sour.

Eames felt the car roll, down in the dream, felt gravity begin to slide around them. Browning’s projections looked up as their world tilted. The saw, in Browning’s eyes, the moment that his training awakened. Projections began to converge on the table, weaving through the maze. Eames closed his eyes, eyes that were a pretty sea green thanks to the colored contacts the girl affected, and prayed to hear the first bars of Piaf, even though he knew it was far too early. Just before the projections reached them, he felt the clock run out.

He came awake instantly and calmly. He’d been in the business too long not to. He tried to open his eyes and found he couldn’t. It took him a few minutes later to realize that open, closed, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t see anything. There was a textile against his cheek, rough, and he thought it might be burlap. Maybe hemp.

The realization came to him slow, like it was trying to fight its way upstream. He’d been bagged. Considering the state of his thoughts, he’d probably been drugged, as well. He blinked a few more times, then lifted his face, searching through the weave for light. There had to be one.

He found it when he was faced to it, and felt the rip of the weave leaving his face. It didn’t matter; the sudden transition from dark to light had the same effect as the bag in the first place. He couldn’t see anything besides the sudden circle of light in his face.

“A halogen lamp, really? Don’t you think that’s a bit cliche?” he asked the room. No one responded, which was more or less par the course for back room interrogations. He’d thought Browning’s security were paid to be more original.

It could have been minutes, or hours, before he heard the heavy tread of footsteps. “Tell us about your interest in Mr. Browning.” 

The voice was higher than he would have expected -- a tenor, and not the whispered, raspy base that this environment demanded. Of course, years of exposure to Arthur had taught him that tenors could be, in their own way, terrifying.

Arthur, right now, thought he was waking Browning up in the backseat of a town car, babbling about fits of unconsciousness. Telling Browning that he’d complained of a sudden pain in his left arm before he’d passed out and demanding the car be rerouted to the hospital, where the injection site of the PASIV could be hidden among blood draws and fresh IVs. Or maybe Arthur already knew he was missing, when he hadn’t checked in for his return flight? He didn’t know how long it had been since they’d grabbed him. Jason Andrews wasn’t scheduled to leave Mumbai for another two days, but Brian Donahey had a flight out four hours from the meeting. He pondered that, instead of an answer to the interrogator’s questions.

“What is your interest in Mr. Browning?” the tenor asked him again. “What is your real name?”

At least, a question Eames could answer. He perked up in the harsh light, and said, “Sir Robin of Camelot.”

He couldn’t see, but he felt it when the tenor leaned in, his breath warm, and he waited for the usual platitudes -- the hard way or the easy way, his choice, etc etc -- but all the man said was, “Mr. Andrews, are you sure that’s your answer?”

“If I say no, am I thrown off the bridge?” he asked.

He’d expecting the fist in his gut. The second one, across his forehead, took him by surprise.

It didn’t stop until the light went dim again.

* * *

“You told me we shouldn’t worry about Eames!” Ariadne said, almost shouting, her arms crossed.

“Now I’m telling you we should worry,” Arthur responded. As much as he wished to imitate her, he kept his voice even and quiet. “He didn’t call after the extraction, or make his flight.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have let him go alone,” Ariadne said, but she was too strong to hold onto petty grudges. He watched her let it go, squaring her shoulders and looking up. “Okay. So we’re going to Mumbai?”

Arthur waited a long moment before answering. He wanted to protect Ariadne. They all did, to some extent, and he couldn't be sure what kind of condition they would find Eames in. But without her, he forced himself to admit, he might not find Eames at all. Charging in solo hadn’t worked before, and Arthur wasn’t a fan of repeating his mistakes.

"No, I don't think we are," he said finally, motioning her over with his fingers. "Look at this. Browning's private jet left Mumbai about two hours ago. As far as I can tell, Browning wasn't on it."

"Who was?" she asked, and he shrugged.

"Hard to say. They flew local, so the records aren't ideal. But three men were on Browning's staff in Mumbai, and they've been replaced." His fingers flew over the keyboard, bringing up photos.

"Security?" Ariadne asked.

"Most likely. The plan checked in with flight control at Delhi Airport. _That's_ where we're going."

"I can pack for us," Ariadne said, taking the stairs two at a time.

"Don't forget --"

"Guns, first aid kit, casual and formal clothes -- I know, I know," She waved him away. "Book the tickets!"

They were on the plane within an hour.

* * *

Eames drifted in and out of consciousness, clinging to coherency where he could. He thought the man holding him was probably Randy Miems. On the books, he was a personal assistant. Off the books, Browning had three secretaries and two PAs besides Mr. Miems. None of _them_ had 10th dan black belts in two separate styles of Martial Arts, or a concealed carry permit in 26 countries.

He hadn't really thought of Mr. Miems as a tenor, but it made sense.

His left eye was swollen shut and he wouldn't be able to see out of it, even if they turned off the light. He'd closed his right eye long ago. The fluorescents were giving him a headache. Or at least, they weren't helping the multiple blows to the head.

Because his eyes were closed, his other senses were heightened. That wasn't just a myth; good to know. Sort of thing that could save your life in situations like this. And he heard voices.

"Has he told you anything?" He knew that voice. He'd heard it come out of his own throat before. Browning. It would be so easy to drift away, but he waited to hear the response.

"No," Maybe-Miems said.

"I want him out of here. He's a liability," Browning said, and Eames felt like this was important, so he strained through the fog to listen.

When he woke up again, he smelled the recirculated air of a plane cabin.


	2. Over the Edge

**over the edge;**  
(part two)

The flight from Nice to New Delhi took longer than either of them wanted. Waiting in traffic afterwards was impossible. Arthur drummed his fingers against the steering wheel with one hand. I n the other, he clutched his smartphone, scrolling through property listings. He looked between the screen and Ariadne, who stared out the window hard, the same look she’d given her maze. As if she could divine Eames’s location simply by demanding it from the universe.

“Arthur,” she said, turning to him, her eyes suddenly wide. They were midway through the business district, sandwiched on all sides by gridlock. “If I were gonna hide someone I wouldn’t use a warehouse. It’s the first place anyone trying to rescue them would look.”

Working with Ariadne, he found it hard sometimes to remember that it was only her second job and she was still learning. That Dom had pulled her out of college, for god’s sake, and she was him, ten years and twice as many arrest warrants ago. He felt a sudden swell in his chest that could have been either grief or pride as he handed her the cell phone. “I’m looking at four star hotels. Find one with a freight elevator.”

A neat swerve took them out of the way of a bicyclist who didn’t seem too concerned by traffic or right-of-way, and Ariadne juggled the phone before catching it and pulling up directions to the likelies.

* * *

“Mr. Andrews.”

Maybe-Miems had been gone for a while, he thought muzzily. Well, torture was hard work. Mallets were heavy and hard to swing, and when you were going one finger at a time, your aim had to be _precise._ Eames had pointed that out earlier and Miems had said, “Kneecaps, Mr. Andrews, are significantly less precise.” He’d left the room while Eames had been working on stopping his own screams. He could have been gone for minutes or hours. When he came back, Eames smelled tobacco. 

He felt the cigarette as Miems pushed it between his lips. The click of the lighter was too loud, the butane flame explosively hot and close against his skin. In spite of the implied threat, it seemed they’d reached the good cop portion of the evening. He knew this game. He’d seen it on every bad TV melodrama to air in the last thirty years. Still, in all the time he’d worked with Arthur, he realized he’d never seen the other man play Good Cop/Bad Cop. Good Cop/Slightly Less Homicidal Cop, maybe, on occasion. 

Still, Eames appreciated a good hit as much as the next right-thinking man. Tobacco was nothing to sneeze at, even the cheap menthol crap Miems apparently smoked. Smoker to smoker, Eames felt he owed the man a debt. He said, helpfully, “You know your government lets them cut your fags with arsenic?”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Miems said. “Mr. Andrews, are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to tell me?”

“My name isn’t Jason Andrews,” Eames said finally, breathing out the smoke with a heavy sigh. He felt Miems lean forward, heard Miems’s breath in his space and felt the nearness of his body, and he added, “And this tastes like shit.”

* * *

They got into a fight over, of all things, whether or not Ariadne could come in with him.  
“Ariadne,” Arthur said through gritted teeth. “Do you have any idea how many heists go wrong over just this sort of stupid argument?” and he told himself that it had more to do with needing her to drive the rental car and nothing at all to do with the fact that when Dom had heard about the job, all he’d said was, “Keep her out of trouble.” 

“This isn’t a heist! It’s a rescue!” Ariadne’s shrill voice drew him back to present. 

“It’s still a heist. We’re just stealing back what’s rightfully ours to begin with,” he said. That sounded like something Eames would say, possibly even something he’d heard out of the forger. It certainly wasn’t his own rational. 

Ariadne said, “But we need a _plan._ ”

“We have a plan,” he told her. “I go in, get Eames, bring him out. You stay here, keep the car running, keep your head down, and please, _please_ remember to drive on the wrong side of the road and we’ll be fine.” His plans were really lacking something these days. He filed it as a side bar, something to address in the future.

* * *

He didn’t come in guns blazing so much as guns vibrating from rapid pattern gunfire, and Eames learned two things in that instant. One, that he was apparently prone to making really shitty similes during or after torture. Two, that he had never loved anything so much as the sound of Arthur’s voice saying, “They only broke one of your kneecaps, Mr. Eames. Don’t make excuses,” overlaid with small scale combustion.

“Are you calling me a sissy?” he asked. Arthur didn’t bother untying his wrists, only slid his arm around Eames’s ribs and hefted him. The touch compressed bruises he hadn’t realized were there, making him hiss, but he could feel the shot of the recoil from Arthur’s body into his. Someone must have tried to stand up again.  
“I would never say sissy,” Arthur said over the heavy smell of copper. “Don’t put words in my mouth.” 

“Couldn’t if I tried,” Eames said. He half walked, half let himself be dragged, trying hard to pretend that Arthur wasn’t taking most of his weight. Still flash blind in his good eye, he made his way by following Arthur and bracing his foot against the industrial concrete floor. He thought they might be in a loading dock or a service corridor somewhere, and confirmed it when he heard the rattle and bang of what could only be a freight elevator cage. Seconds later, they began to rise, and Eames began to sag. By the time the elevator slowed at their floor, his vision had begun to clear, and he was limp enough to let Arthur load him into the back seat of the car. The point man clambered in after him, not, Eames was sure, because he was worried, but because he didn’t want to take the time to go around to the other door. Eames struggled to connect his words with the end of his thought. “You’re much better spoken than I am.”

Eames gave in to pain and exhaustion as adrenaline flushed from his system. He blacked out in the car and only took in snippets of what happened next: the sound of Arthur’s voice as he made a barrage of calls. Eames closed his eyes and let the tone, not the words, wash over him. Later, he vaguely recalled the short walk from car to plane, trying to balance on one leg with an arm around Arthur’s shoulders and the other, comically lower, against Ariadne’s. He remembered struggling up the stairs on the tarmac. 

He didn’t know exactly where Arthur had gotten the private jet. He had his suspicions, of course, but with Arthur, one could never quite tell. Overall, he ranked this flight as far more comfortable than his last. Ariadne held his hand and fretted and was generally quite charming, in the way beautiful girls worried for one’s life were. Arthur was utterly merciless in his field dressing, but he gave Eames an ice pack for his black eye, which felt lovely and cool against the swelling.

“I feel like I’m flying,” he confided in Ariadne as she held a glass of water to his lips.

“You are flying,” she told him.

“I meant floating,” he tried again.

He fell asleep, and when he woke up again, it was Arthur sitting beside him. “I think I’m dying,” he told Arthur.

“You have a concussion,” Arthur told him. “Your knee and fingers are broken. Last time I checked, none of those is life threatening, evening in combination.”

“We could pretend I’m dying. It would be quite tragic.”

“Or I could up your dose on the morphine and maybe you’d fall asleep,” Eames fancied he heard a bit of wry amusement in Arthur’s tone.

“You won’t hear me complaining, darling,” he said. He closed his eyes again -- he did feel floaty, and not just because he was on an airplane, no matter what Ariadne thought. Ariadne -- “She’s a hell of a driver, isn’t she?” he asked, and he imagined Arthur’s lips curling up. “Drove on the right side and everything,” because he only remembered Arthur shrieking once on the entire ride over.

“Go to sleep,” Arthur said.

“Is she flying the plane?” he asked.

“Go to _sleep_ ,” Arthur said, this time much less gently. Eames mumbled something he thought was an assent, and thought maybe he felt fingers in his hair. “Sleep and get better,” Arthur said again, so quietly that Eames thought maybe it was the morphine and his concussed brain making things up.

“Didn’t know you cared,” he said, and Arthur’s voice was so sharp he knew it had been real.

“I don’t, you idiot. We’ve got no one else who can forge. I’m crap at it. Whatever it is you do. I don’t know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”

“Arthur,” Eames gave him his most winning smile. “If that’s all you wanted to know, you only had to ask.”

Arthur didn’t like repeating himself, which was, Eames thought, perhaps the only reason he gritted his teeth and made a hissing sound instead of saying anything. It didn’t bother Eames that the conversation had grown rather one side.

“There is something I’d like to know,” he said after a moment, forcing his way through the hazy veil of drugs and minor intracranial bleeding. “Because I only work with the best. We are the best, aren’t we still, darling? Because it seems to me we really cocked this one up.”

Arthur, it seemed, didn’t have much of an answer for that, besides laying his fingertips against Eames’s hairline. They were almost as cool as the ice pack.

* * *

The worst thing that Arthur could imagine happening during a job was a broken bone. Worse, even, than a hospital stay, because at least in the hospital there was a hope of security. Favors that could be called in. A broken bone meant months of recovery, of immobility. _Vulnerability._ Legs -- kneecaps -- meant crutches. Eames was going to need a surgery, maybe two, and be pinned to one hospital for weeks of physical therapy, just for the knee. And, though it was by far the most medically severe, it wasn’t the knee that made Arthur’s stomach twist as he watched Eames sleep. 

They switched planes twice, and went around the globe the long way so that they weren’t tracked. Saito had made it a condition of flying them out of New Delhi, and while Arthur personally found it ridiculous, urgency had pressed him to agree. At least they had privacy for it. The final leg, Miami to Boston, took place on a suspiciously empty plane from Saito’s airline. 

Arthur chose Boston because none of them had been there in ten years, because it had A-class medical facilities, because New York was too obvious, because Chicago was two hours further away and they’d already wasted enough time with this ridiculous roundabout route to get here in the first place.

He'd made sure Eames was out before he crossed the first class cabin to sit by Ariadne. He pulled a small pack from his briefcase, emptying it onto the tray table. 

"It's kind of scary that you have six wallets," Ariadne told him, half asleep. Her nose was hidden between her knees, only her eyes and forehead visible above them.

"Five, after I give one to you," he said, unrolling a stack of Euros and counting them out. "When we land, I want you to take a cab and find a currency exchange. I've got U.S. Dollars, but there's always the possibility they're marked. This way is better; more random. Exchange these, then take your cab to Cambridge and get us a room. Can you do that?"

Looking more awake, her eyes dark with worry, she nodded and took the bills from him. "Any hotel in particular?"

"There's a Holiday Inn on Tremont. I'll get you a fresh ID to check in under, then you meet me in the lot, alright? Leave your cell phone on the plane."

Ariadne was a bright girl and a quick learner. She asked, "Take out the SIM card?"

"Leave it in. This plane makes a thirty minute layover and then continues on to Montreal." It had taken a few years, after the introduction of cell phones to society, for criminals to realize just how easy it was for the devices to be used for tracking. Arthur made a point of never working with anyone who hadn't yet grasped the concept.

It was Eames who'd first pointed out that anything you could use to follow someone, you could use just as well to lay a false trail.

“Go sit with him,” Arthur said quietly, his face impassive. Ariadne raised her head to look over at their sleeping colleague, then nodded without any argument. She stood and took the chair beside Eames. Arthur looked up and saw her fingers tangled in his hair, stroking over his temple lightly.

He dragged his attention back to the task at hand. First, he grabbed another bag from the overhead compartment and tossed it onto the seat next to him. He dropped both tray tables down before sliding back into his seat. Intent only on his task, ignoring the flight attendant in the galley and his partners across the cabin, he pulled out first his laptop and set it out on the further tray table. On the nearer, he placed a pile of IDs and passports -- different states, different countries, some military.

Massachusetts had recently strengthened their ID laws on the purchase of alcohol, he remembered, but a lot of establishments were cracking down entirely. He sorted through the pile until he found a Massachusetts driver’s license, and with his pocket knife, began very gently prying apart the lamination on the card. Each of them had a sheet of photos at the ready, and he trimmed one of Ariadne’s to size.

He pressed Ariadne’s photo over the other and folded a handkerchief around the license. With a small pocket iron, he sealed the edges again, holding the edges perfectly aligned. Neither Eames, half blind, nor Ariadne, with all her attention on Eames, could see if his fingers shook, so as far as Arthur was concerned, they didn’t. 

Eames did this better. He didn’t want, right now, to think about Eames’s fingers holding the seam shut, making slow, even passes over the handkerchief with the iron. Eames had wonderful hands. They were made for slipping into pockets, flipping poker chips, writing out false government documents, and yes, making fake IDs.

Only Eames’s left hand had gone under the hammer. Arthur worked meticulously, unfolding the ID, and trimming the slight overlap with a razor, and very determinedly not thinking about the purpled, swollen digits. Miems had been using pain to try and break Eames. A solid strategy that had ultimately failed. But the kind of man Eames was -- if Miems had done the same to Eames’s dominant hand, it might have worked. It was what Arthur would have done. He wasn’t sure why Miems hadn’t. 

They landed at Logan at 2:15 local time, according to the clock in their rental. He eased the heavily drugged Eames into the passenger seat, taking the speed limit as more of a suggestion as they merged into the tunnels that connected East Boston to the mainland.

The ID he’d made Ariadne was a hack, one use only, meant for the eyes of the currency exchange clerk and the hotel receptionist. Both were likely to be underpaid grad students, disinterested in their jobs and unlikely to look hard at or question a familiar driver’s license. For situations like this, he and Eames had emergency IDs laid by that were clean and deep enough to withstand a harder look. They had fake Social Security numbers, gleaned from death records, and (for when it was needed) just enough health insurance to get a man admitted through the emergency room.

There was a shift from the man in the seat next to him, and he looked over to find Eames watching him, his good eye barely open, but focused on Arthur.

“Timing’s impeccable, darling,” he hissed out, long pauses between each word where he just breathed. That would be the pain medication wearing off, a necessity, if they didn’t want to raise too many eyebrows.

“Eames,” he said softly, urgently, as he parked his car just outside the ambulance lot. “I need you to follow my story. Can you?”

There was something that looked like affront in Eames gaze, and he slurred, “Arthur, I am a consummate professional.” At least, that was what Arthur thought he said. Some -- most -- of the vowels were missing.

He must have gotten it right, though, because when he rolled his eyes and said, “Of _course_ you are,” Eames gave him what was almost a smile.

“Boating accident. A fall,” is what he told them in the ER. He knew they didn’t believe him, but Eames, bless his lying con-man heart, slurred out, “Fell off the main mast,” and they suspended their disbelief at least enough to get to work. Arthur gave the nurse a list of the meds he’d given Eames and when -- in theory, as they’d sailed back to the harbor.

When they took Eames into surgery, Arthur was supposed to stay in the waiting room. He didn’t, of course. He hadn’t had a cell phone in almost three hours, now, and Ariadne couldn’t fall asleep while she waited for him.

He made his way to the hotel parking garage by way of Radio Shack, and found her sitting on the curb with her cheek against her knees. Arthur parked the rental and climbed out sit beside her, handing her a disposable cell. She traded him his laptop bag, and he put his heels up on the curb. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “The emergency room --”

“Hey, I know they take forever.” She gave him a smile and a shrug. “How is he?”

“Sedated.”

Ariadne laughed, a nervous release of energy with no actual humor. “That must make him happy.”

“You have no idea,” Arthur gave a laugh of his own. “They took him into surgery,”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ariadne asked him, which was a perfectly fair question. He really didn’t know.

He got her back up to their room and left her asleep, taking his laptop back to the hospital waiting room. For the next two hours, he sat in a crappy hospital waiting room chair, flipping back and forth between an excel doc filled with information on Browning and a game of Freecell. He accomplished significantly more on the latter.

When a nurse finally called “Walter Wilhelm,” at almost 6 AM, it took him a moment to rise from the haze of red six, black five, and remember what alias Eames had registered under. He stood, closing his laptop and tucking it under his arm as he moved to the desk. It was a slim chance, but not outside the realm of possibility, that someone would steal it or nose through his files if he left it open. Emergency room or not, there was no excuse for being sloppy.

“He’s in post-op and it went well,” the nurse informed him. “You should be able to bring him home soon. Once they’re sure that he’s recovering from the anesthetics.”

“Thank you,” he said finally, and returned to his chair to -- what? To wait? After a moment of staring blankly at his freecell game, he slammed the machine closed again and returned to the desk.

“Is there a room, or something, or --”

“Sure, you can go up and see him,” the nurse said, not even looking up from her computer. She waved a hand vaguely at the proper door, and Arthur had to remind himself to walk, not run, through it.

All of them spent a lot of time under sedation. Yes, Somnacin was a chemical compound different from general anesthetic, but the effect on the body wasn’t so different. They spent their lives waking up from sedation. Arthur himself had spent years learning to wake up without physical fog from the drug, and so he wasn’t surprised to find Eames’s eyes open and focused when he reached the room. “Hi,” he said, sitting down at the foot of the bed.

“Hi,” Eames said back, and Arthur knew that look. It was a combination of pain and boredom, and on Eames, it meant trouble. None of them was very good at sitting idle.

“I brought you presents,” Arthur said quickly, to ward off the impending explosion. The last of the cells he’d picked up -- the first of many they were going to need, he suspected, at least if things kept going the way they were. Atop it, he placed his impulse buy.

He’d been unable to resist. Standing at the counter at Radio Shack, three throw-away phones piled on the counter, and he knew he looked beyond shady, buying disposable cell phones at three in the morning. The counter was covered with bins of knick knacks from made-for-TV-infomercial products, and this had been one of them. He’d grabbed it before he could think too hard.

Now, it sat between them, balanced atop a disposable cell phone with ball eyes staring at it. “You got me a stress ball,” Eames said, his voice low so as to avoid drawing the nurses’ attention. “You got me a stress ball with a picture of Hillary Clinton on it.”

“They were fresh out of the House of Lords,” Arthur said, trying for light, but it came out as more of a question. Eames grinned, tossing the item to itself.

“Bloody Boston, huh?” he said.

Arthur gave him a grin for just a moment, before his cheeks smoothed out. “How’s the hand?” he asked, and Eames rolled his head to the side to look at it.

“I’m assured I’ll make a full recovery, given proper PT,” he said in a strange, flat voice that Arthur had heard out of him before -- in the warehouse on the first level of Fischer’s dream. He hadn’t liked it then, either, and he swallowed hard, trying to find something to say.

He needn’t have bothered, because Eames passed through the moment of melancholy as quickly as he flitted through most emotions, focusing his gaze on Arthur with an insufferable smirk. “So!” he said, his accent still drawling out the vowels of everything he said. “I don’t know if you heard, but I received instruction mid-flight. I’m supposed to say something to you, because our darling Ariadne is _worried._ She thinks you’re absolutely riddled with self guilt.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Arthur snatched at the topic like an escape route, glad to be back on solid ground, in his role as part of the team. Eames didn’t seem to disagree.

“I told her robots weren’t built with emotions, but what can you do?” His voice suggested an element of, ‘It’s Ariadne,’ equal parts dismissive and fond, and Arthur didn’t know which of the jabs he was supposed to go for. He was relieved when the nurse came over, scanned Eames’s chart once more, and told them he’d be ready to leave in a few more minutes. “Thank god,” Eames said in an undertone, once she’d moved on. “You know how miserly she is with those Norco? I’ve met gem dealers less tight-fisted with their stock.”

“And I assume they, too, found their pockets significantly lighter after meeting you,” Arthur ground back. He was willing to bet that somewhere on Eames’s person there was a collection of pills. He waved a hand vaguely at Eames’s wrist, where a folded square of cotton had been taped over the place they’d had in his IV. “Why didn’t you just ask for injectables?”

Eames waved the wrist (of his good hand, of course, which Arthur could only assume was the final insult of this entire endeavor.) “Why?” he said, waving the messy plug of gauze and tape under Arthur’s nose. “Why? Darling, there’s a reason I prefer to know the people sticking me with bloody great needles and injecting things into me!”

“Well then, it’s a good thing you know me so well,” Arthur said.

Eames looked at him strangely for a long moment. Finally, he said, “They didn’t know who I was.” A thought Arthur couldn’t connect to their previous conversation or, really, anything except his thoughts over the last four hours. But that was impossible. He opened his mouth to respond, just as the nurse returned with a bag of Eames’s clothing. His jaw snapped back shut. They certainly weren’t discussing this in front of her.

Aware that Eames was watching him, Arthur waved the clothes off. Ariadne had thoughtfully slipped a second set into Arthur’s laptop bag, and he offered them now. Eames only looked away to murmur, “I agree entirely. Burn those, pet, won’t you?”

It took Arthur a moment to realize he was speaking to the nurse, not him.

On the car ride home, Eames asked, “What should I tell Ariadne?” Arthur had been focusing on the traffic, which, by this time of morning, had grown so thick that it took them almost as long to drive back to the hotel as it did to fly from New Delhi. The question jolted him back to the present.

“Do you have to tell her anything?” Arthur asked, then thought better of it, changed lanes, and then said, “Tell her whatever you want.”

“You’re fine, focus on the job, on we go. Right. Got it,” there was something dismissive in Eames’s voice, but if he was rolling his eyes or judging Arthur’s interpersonal skills, Arthur decided he didn’t dare take his eyes off the road to address it. He didn’t want anything slowing them down further, which was why he ignored Eames when the forger added in a mutter, “Or I could tell her that she’s right.”

* * *

Eames spent the next three weeks in bed, flipping through the pay-per-view channels on the hotel television. Ariadne watched him and pretended not to worry, while Arthur worried and pretended not to watch him. Arthur had filed his prescriptions, but tucked them instead into their ever-growing first aid kit, offering Eames the more expensive painkillers he kept for emergecies. Eames accepted, cautiously. By the end of the first week, he had cut himself off injectable meds entirely and was working on weaning down the oral, long before the pain from his knee had begun to abate. He was _aware_ of it, which made it infinitely worse.

“Do _something_ useful, Eames?” Arthur snapped at him, and he found a credit card, a social security number, and a fresh license of Ariadne’s in front of him. He went to work with relish.

Ariadne used the new ID to check them into a new room, and they transferred their possessions over to their new abode and new identity without any of the hotel staff realizing they were already guests. As a strategic move, Eames approved of it. Very few things stood out more than a paying for a hotel with cash, besides which, paying cash tended to involve actually paying. By the time this credit card hit its limit, they’d have abandoned the identity and, hopefully, the city.

Of course, in actuality, the move turned out to be more of Eames lying on the bed while Ariadne and Arthur wheeled suitcases through the hall. Therapist’s orders: he wasn’t allowed to take any weight, even his own. When he found himself gently settled into a new bed, exactly the same as the old, right down to the stains on the comforter (which, really, those weren’t worth thinking about) his mood grew darker.

Eames’s job was to know people, and he had never been very good at pretending modesty. He included himself, which meant that he _knew_ he was being a total bear about his recovery. He didn’t need Ariadne whispering, _sotto voce_ , “Will you find a reason to sedate him again?” to drive the point home. It was an improvement over the first two weeks, he supposed, where she’d treated him like glass.

Arthur’s company, at least, was more palatable, mostly due to the fact that he treated Eames more or less the same as he always had. “Have mercy, darling, I’m an invalid!” Eames implored, earning himself a very precious roll of Arthur’s eyes.

“You’re an invalid sitting on the remote, and you’re supposed to be exercising that knee.”

“I just had surgery!” Eames protested, his fall-back excuse. Despite it, he did ease himself onto a crutch to cross the room, handing Arthur the television remote before returning to what, by this point, could really only be called his nest.

So he didn’t exercise the knee quite as much as his physical therapist wanted. It was healing fine, and doctors were sadist. That was a well known fact. His fingers closed and opened rhythmically around Arthur’s “present”.

“Tell me something. I know you aren’t playing Angry Birds,” he said finally to Arthur. He’d managed to prolong the great remote control struggle to almost twenty minutes, but now it was over, and he was quickly growing bored again. If he were able to see the man’s laptop screen he’d simply look for himself, but Arthur had long ago learned to set up shop out of Eames’s direct line of site. He’d also, apparently, learned to start using non-reflective screens -- another priceless tidbit of information he’d gathered from Eames, perhaps. Why should he have to fetch and carry remotes when his very existence was, obviously, a gift to the world?

Seemingly without discussion, they’d fallen into a pattern, living easily despite the cramped quarters. Eames took one bed and Ariadne the other, while Arthur laid claim to the only desk in the room and slept on the couch when he slept at all.

If Arthur was working harder, longer hours and more driven than Eames had ever seen him before, well, he knew not to say so.

Overall, it turned into not much more than a constant fight over the television remote (Ariadne, it surprised no one, favored crime and medical dramas, which Eames found palatable enough when there wasn’t a film worth watching, but Arthur wanted the news or, inexplicably, Food Network), the quiet, steady clack of Arthur’s keyboard, and the conversations fading in and out as people passed through the hallway. Eames, used to living out of hotels, had been in worse -- even if he couldn’t quite fathom why you wanted to spend an hour watching someone cook a meal you’d never get to taste.

“What did you learn in Browning’s subconscious?” Arthur asked him, but Arthur wouldn’t look at him. Arthur, it seemed, only had eyes for LCD screens these days. Perhaps, Eames mused, tossing an M&M into the air and catching it on his tongue, perhaps he should dress up like a laptop if he wanted any sort of attention.

Ariadne left to pick up their takeout. Thai, today -- Boston was large enough that they could order from a fresh restaurant every day without gathering any attention. “I learned that he likes his peanut butter kept in the fridge, because his nanny made his sandwiches that way when he was young.”

“I’d have thought she made them that way when he was older, obviously,” Arthur bit back, his face pinched in the blue light. “What did you learn that was _useful?_ ”

Eames ignored the question, because after all, wasn’t it obvious by now that he had nothing? “One of these days, darling,” he murmured to Arthur, who stared harder at his laptop, “We’re going to have to talk about what I said.”

Arthur reached for his phone, as if he could entirely ignore Eames. Eames was beginning to see a bit of a pattern in him, the way he avoided whatever he didn’t want to deal with by focusing on his own excellence. He’d done it for years with Dominick Cobb. Not this time. 

“Browning’s security had no idea who I was, Arthur,” Eames pushed on. He could make Arthur pay attention to him when Arthur was clearly determined not to, but he couldn’t let it go any longer. Arthur was operating under the assumption that this had been an ambush, premeditated, a theory which had merit. It also raised too many questions for Eames to accept it blindly, especially now that he had so much time to count ceiling tiles. 

Arthur dialed with one hand and very definitely did not meet Eames’s eyes. Obviously, he knew his theory was full of shit, too, but he clung to it. Eames expected he saw it as one last bit of order in the insane mess their lives had become. “Browning’s security was ready for an attack, Eames. They didn’t just catch you, they were expecting you. They were expecting you,” Arthur said.

“If they were ready for me, why let me take Browning under? They worked fast, I grant you, but why not take me the moment I got in the car?” Although he’d vowed to approach this calmly, Eames felt his temper fraying, heard his tone snap. “They had me for twenty-one bloody hours, Arthur! Why would they waste it asking me my name if they were waiting for me?”

Arthur paused, his thumb hovering above the last number, and then he punched it. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we need an outside perspective.” 

That could only mean one thing, and Eames didn’t think he could respond rationally. Not if they were bringing Dominick Cobb into this. And that was why, when Ariadne returned with their Thai food, she found him sitting at the far edge of his bed, while Arthur turned his back and stared at the phone. Wisely, she chose only to listen, rather than letting herself be dragged into the tangle. 

“Inception changes people.” Cobb’s voice rang out from the speaker of Arthur’s cell. Eames was very proud of himself that he hadn’t thrown a fork at it yet. Cobb’s disembodied voice continued, “The inception took, we know that. Even if Fischer knows something -- especially if he knows something, if the memories of that job are still there -- it’s possible he no longer trusts Browning. That could spark retaliation from Browning, or if Fischer distrusts him enough, he could be using Browning as bait.”

He’d managed to stay quiet for most of the conversation, but that was too much. “I’m sorry,” Eames drawled, leaning toward the phone to make sure he was heard. “Are you saying this is my fault?”

“No one’s saying --” Ariadne could only stay silent for so long, but Eames held up a hand to hush her.

“Let’s just be clear, love. I impersonated Browning. It was my strategy. Cobb is now saying now that because we destroyed that relationship, Browning’s coming after us. Well, Ariadne built the mazes, but I was the architect of the psychological attack. He’s saying this was my fault.”

There was a long, damning silence from the phone line, broken only when Arthur cleared his throat. “I don’t think we should jump to the conclusion that it’s Browning. It’s looking that way, yes, but Eames has raised some good points that it’s hasty to discount.”

“Listen.” Cobb’s voice was soothing, paternal, and very patronising. Eames remembered why, after the high of performing inception had worn off, he’d been so very, very pleased to have the man retire. “Arthur’s right, it’s too soon to discount anything,” Eames noticed that ‘anything’ in this case constituted his own opinion, for which Cobb apparently couldn’t give him credit, “but I think that includes what Eames went through there.” 

Cobb wasn’t there, Eames reminded himself. Cobb couldn’t see the looks being exchanged among the three of them, and that was why he delivered the final blow, shoved his foot into his mouth ever so cleanly, and added, “Information extracted by torture isn’t reliable.”

Eames thought, with some satisfaction, that he’d never seen Arthur hang up a phone so quickly.

A wise man would have taken that as a win, let it go, and walked away. Eames might have been wise in other ways, but this was one he could not let go, which was why he drawled, “Remind me again why we’ve started taking advice from the man who tried to shove us all merrily into Limbo?”

Arthur glared at him, his brow all scrunched up in those delightful wrinkles it got when Eames was being particularly irritating. Eames gave him the brightest grin he could and watched them smooth away. Maybe they only smoothed away so that he could roll his eyes, but _that_ , Eames would take as a win.

“I admit, it’s a bit rich to hear him talking about information extracted under torture,” Arthur said finally, just the corner of his lip quirking upward, which made Eames’s grin morph into something almost sincere. But after a moment, Arthur’s lips smoothed out again, into a flat line. “Dom’s right. We can’t discount anything. Not -- not you,” he held up a hand to still Eames’s protest. “If you say they didn’t know who you were, I believe you. But I don’t think we’re on the wrong track.”

How could he be right but not be right? Eames refrained from pointing out all the fallacies in that statement, leaning back against a pile of pillows and kicking his bad leg over his good. “Alright then, love, convince me.”

* * *

After midnight, Arthur took his laptop to the unstaffed business center, tucking himself into the furthest corner he could find. Eames, despite spending his days confined to the room, tired easily. Arthur would probably have been able to work without waking him, but Ariadne was a light sleeper. He’d learned after the first few nights that eventually she would want him to leave -- and express that desire with sleepily thrown, badly aimed projectiles.

After a roll of toilet paper had finally knocked over a long-cold venti Italian Roast, Arthur had scooped up his laptop, cursed loud enough to wake Eames and their neighbors on the other side of the wall, and from then on decided that it would be better to relocate in the evenings.

The so called “business class” hotel was deserted in the early hours. If not for him, the business center would have been open in name only. In fact, Arthur was hard pressed to remember a hotel he’d ever stayed in where anyone was up and about after midnight. So much for the busy life of the office drone.

He leaned back as far as the office chair would let him, bracing his laptop on his knees. Ordinarily, he could scan documents and parcel together spreadsheets for hours, but tonight, his attention drifted. The lobby of the hotel reminded him too much of one of his dreamscapes, completely empty of projections.

Usually, Arthur found the solitude of his own mind peaceful. Now, though, with nothing to distract him, it felt like he was chasing himself in circles. He believed it when Eames said Browning’s men hadn’t known who he was, but if Browning hadn’t set the trap, then who? Fischer, using Browning as bait? Or was the tie between RPF and Mercalis entirely incidental, and had they been on the wrong track from the beginning? Whatever the answer, it circled around to ‘this is my fault.’ Arthur wasn’t prone to self doubt, except tonight, it seemed, he was.

In the end, all of it came back to New Delhi. The tie between Mercalis and RPF was too obvious not to be relevant. The fake job from Manns was bait to a trap that Browning didn’t seem to realize he was a part of. That, logically, led to someone above him pulling the strings: possibly Fischer, or maybe someone else entirely. 

Either way, the key lay in the direction. There was a link he was missing. Arthur spent his days and nights sifting through information and eventually, it all came down to patterns. He knew this pattern, he just couldn’t complete it. 

And, at the end of the day, there were two ways to find that missing piece. They could continue as they had been, stumbling around in the dark in hopes that when they finally found the key, it wouldn’t be too late. Or they could go directly to the source. They’d tried that already, and look how it had turned out. 

Arthur was too well mannered to slam his laptop shut, but if it closed a little more forcefully than was necessary, there was no one here to see. If he was going to stare at the ceiling and ponder impossibles, he could do it in the comfort and privacy of their room.

* * *

The thing about being confined to bed, even injured and drugged, was that sleep became elusive. Eames was especially susceptible to this, as used as he was used to going without already. He spent more time than he was willing to admit to lying awake at night, letting his thoughts race, and dozed off during the day, letting the others think he was worse off than he was.

He heard the door open as Arthur came in, rolling his eyes to the clock -- nearly three AM. It wasn’t a record, but it was impressive none the less, especially since he knew the point man had begun work sometime between five and seven AM, when Eames had fallen asleep the night before. Eames believed in rewarding excellence. He rolled over, carefully, keeping his knee steady and his voice low as he murmured, “Still awake?”

He heard, rather than saw, the shift of silk against cotton, spared a moment’s thought to wonder if Arthur slept in his suits. Surely not, as they were always hung pristine and wrinkle free, still in their dry cleaning bags when not being worn. Silk pajamas, then, and Eames felt his mouth go dry. He reached for the glass on his bedside table, finding it by touch, clumsily, and raising it to his lips to gulp what was left.

“Yes,” Arthur finally admitted, as if he knew he’d given himself away but wasn’t ready to admit it. His voice was pitched low to stop from waking Ariadne. “I’m surprised you are.”

He heard the quiet disapproval in Arthur’s voice; of course, Arthur would know his medications and their dosages, when he was scheduled to take each. The narcotics were strong enough to have Eames out and drooling into his pillow if he took them as prescribed. Now they both knew he he hadn’t.

Eames didn’t like the artificial sleep that came with being heavily medicated. It reminded him too much of Somnacin, but without the PASIV he woke too soon and anxious, sometimes panicked, feeling incomplete or like there was something he’d forgotten. Of anyone, Arthur was the most likely to understand. That was probably why he said nothing directly, even though Eames could hear the disapproval tight in the silence. “You should get some rest,” he said to redirect it. 

“So should you,” Arthur pointed out, words heavy with irony. 

Eames had been lying in the darkness for long enough that his eyes were well adjusted. He could see the silhouette of Arthur’s form as he sat upright on the couch, his legs stretched forward. “Any advice on falling asleep?” 

“Stop bothering me.” The words bit, and Eames let the darkness hide his grin. Fair enough, he’d deserved that. But now that Arthur had told him to, it was almost impossible to stop. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well enjoy himself. Pestering Arthur was, very possibly, his favorite way. 

“Tell me a story,” he said instead, settling against the headboard so that they were facing each other, even if it was too dark to see much of the other man’s face.

“A story?” He didn’t need to see Arthur to get incredulity from him. “As in, ‘Once upon a time, in a magical kingdom --”

“I was thinking more, ‘Once upon a time there was a little boy named Arthur,’ if you need a nudge in the right direction,” Eames offered. 

There was just enough a pause for Eames to wonder if maybe he should step back when Arthur drew in an unsteady breath. It was too much to hope for an enlightening answer. All the man said was, “No, Eames, get some rest.” 

“Oh, come on.” Eames monitored his voice, holding it at half teasing, half pleading. “You’re better off telling me where Arthur came from, you know. Anything I make up for myself is likely to be worse.” After a moment, when Arthur didn’t reply, he shrugged and continued, “I’d like to think you it was one of those subdivisions with the truly awful Anglophiliac names. Windsor something. Or Ascot. Ascot Glen. Once upon a time, there was a young man named Arthur, who came from a place called Ascot Glen. You did, didn’t you?” 

In between the words, the silence had grown heavier and stiff in a way it hadn’t been before. Eames was sure, even though he couldn’t see, that Arthur’s lips were pressed into a thin line, fierce and unhappy. His voice dropped even lower as he slowly pieced it together.

“You aren’t from one of those communities, Arthur, are you?” It made sense. Arthur’s motivation, his fierce desire to prove himself. The care he put into dress and presentation. The occasional, aberrant lapse in grammar: Eames’s remembered him, flushed and yelling in Yusuf’s subconscious as they faced down Cobb, ‘With Mal? Because that worked out so good?’

Throughout it all, Arthur hadn’t set a word. And he was still tight tight and silent as Eames said, unsteadily, “Well, then.” 

He expected Arthur to tear him out. Instead, he said, “I had a thought.” As if the entire conversation just between them had never happened. 

Eames shifted in the bed, willing to accept the pass. He braced his foot against its pillow, testing his knee absently. “What sort of thought was that?” Tensing the muscles made him hiss through his teeth, but the ache when he relaxed the muscles was good. Healing.

“I think we go back into Browning’s mind.” Arthur sounded the words out as he spoke them, giving the plan form as he spoke. “We find out exactly what’s going on. I could get us answers in the real world, maybe, if I dug, but that would take weeks at least.”

“Find out how, do you mean?” Eames interrupted him. What it sounded like Arthur was suggesting -- it wasn’t an option for them. He wouldn’t let it be an option.

“Extract it. I don’t see another option, Eames, not if you want to put this together before we’re cornered.”

Cash and fake IDs would only float them for so long. Eames said, with an easiness he didn’t feel, “Look, you may be pissed at me, but is suicide really a viable option here? Quite frankly, Arthur, you’re talking like a crazy person.” He sat. His leg twinged, but supported him, so he pushed it from his mind and focused instead on the plan -- if you could call it that -- that Arthur was outlining. “Darling, are you listening to yourself?”

Eames forced himself to think as Arthur rambled, putting his own thoughts in order as he tuned out the other man’s so-called plan. Was this a reaction to his prying? If so, he would never pry again. He put his feet on the floor and reached for his crutches, standing mostly to see if he could. His leg held his weight, and he made his way across the room. Arthur paused to ask, “Eames? Where are you going?”

He talked as if he hadn’t heard the questio, saying, “You want me to put myself back in Browning’s mind as what, Arthur? As bait?” but his tone was gentle, not angry. 

“The plan--” Arthur began, and Eames cut it off.

“Your so-called plan is shit and we both know it.” His voice stayed quiet, low enough not to wake Ariadne, and there was little heat behind the words. “You’re basically just throwing it out there to see if the cat laps it up, Arthur, and we’ve tried that already. What if Browning doesn’t know anything?” 

“It’s the only way,” Arthur insisted stubbornly. “I know we’re on the right track, Eames, and Browning and Fischer have us outgunned in every way. If we want to survive this--” 

Eames interrupted again, “Do you, Arthur?”

“What?” Eames could see the puzzled look on Arthur’s face with his mind’s eye, even as he faced away. 

“They don’t know who I am. Good odds they don’t know her, either.” Eames jerked a thumb at Ariadne’s bed, knowing Arthur would see the movement if not the gesture in whole. “We’ve suspected from the start that this your mess, Arthur, and the way you’re taking off half-cocked, I have to wonder if you want to see it through.” 

“Am I to understand that you wish to leave?” Arthur picked each word carefully, keeping his tone flat and neutral.

“I think we’ve come to the short of it, love,” Eames agreed. He was just as circumspect in his words, packing his bag on autopilot -- a shirt so, pants so -- like he’d done it a hundred times before, which, as it happened, he had. It wasn’t vicious at all. It was simply the truth. What he needed to do to protect himself. 

“What do you expect me to tell Ariadne?”

Eames stopped to consider it. “I’d tell her that she’s free to leave whenever she’d like,” Eames said finally. Bag on one shoulder, he carried himself to the door, clumsy as he tried to stay silent on crutches. He stopped in front of Arthur, paused for a moment’s thought, and he couldn’t really say why he did it. It just seemed like the thing to do, to lean down to push a kiss to Arthur’s cheek. It was fast, and smooth, and then he was gone.


	3. All The Way Down

**all the way down;**  
(part three)

“We don’t need Eames to do the job,” Arthur found himself repeating by rote. He’d practiced the speech he was going to give Ariadne the night before, composed it as he sat in the dark after Eames left. At least now he had a bed, he thought with grim humor. Ariadne just looked outraged.

“I can’t believe he just snuck out in the night!” she fumed. Arthur blinked.

“He didn’t exactly sneak. He explained his reasoning quite thoroughly,” he said, which did nothing to abate Ariadne’s rage.

“He left while I slept!”

“He is a thief.” Arthur thought his point was reasonable, but Ariadne’s glare grew so fierce that he took a step back before adding, “And he’s right. You should go too. This is about me. I’m putting you in danger.”

“I can’t believe you!” As she continued to rant, Arthur began casing the room for anything he could use as cover.

In the end, his lovely speech was thrown out the window and it was agreed Ariadne would stay. Without really thinking about why, he texted Eames to let him know, and added, ‘at least this way I can keep an eye on her.’ His phone buzzed with a response just a few minutes later. Arthur read it, smiled, and turned back to his computer screen.

After a few days, Ariadne had calmed down enough to come over and stare over his shoulder as he worked. Ordinarily, he didn't like people in that position (Eames did it all the time), but given the situation, he didn’t think he could begrudge her a little transparency. Besides, there wasn’t much for her to do as things stood now. Arthur had every intention of forging ahead on his plan to extract the information they needed from Browning, but they didn't have any hard details beyond that. “I still think we’re going fishing,” Ariadne said, “This actually makes sense to you?”

“We’re not going fishing,” Arthur said automatically, as they’d been having the same conversation over and over again in various permutations. It saved them from having to have other discussions, like the ‘what if you’re wrong’ discussion, or ‘why does Eames still text you’ discussion. He’d take it. 

Arthur had been trying hard not to have those discussions with himself. When Ariadne did try asking about Eames, Arthur answered with vague generalizations, things like, “he can’t have gone far, because he has to finish therapy.” Eames complained almost constantly about PT, about therapists who enjoyed seeing hardened men cry and doctors who were increasingly tight fisted with their prescriptions. But for all of it, Arthur knew he loved his life and his job too much to let his recovery fall by the wayside. Moving a little slower, needing to rest more frequently -- in a dream, maybe it wouldn’t matter. But the long cons, the high-energy heists that Eames loved, were part of the real world. They didn’t allow for anything less than physical perfection. Even if Eames was content to retire to gambling, forgery, and dreamsharing -- which, Arthur knew, would never happen -- none of those activities were as safe in actuality as they presented on paper. Eames had enemies. Arthur tracked them, just like he tracked the forger, and he knew that while none of them were moving in yet,it was only a matter of time. If Eames took any sort of permanent damage, word would leak out, and they’d converge.

Which was why Arthur knew Eames had moved out of Cambridge to Boston proper. He hadn’t meant to follow Eames. He had flags on some of his colleagues’ identities for professional reasons. Eames knew which identities were flagged, he couldn’t not, and he’d still used one to register a suite at the Sheraton Back Bay. It was a professional tip of his hat, and Arthur filed the information away with no intent of ever actually using it. Eames was out. He’d made that clear. Back Bay or Monaco, he wasn’t any less out. Arthur understood that. But Eames’s injury was his fault, and Arthur liked knowing he was safe. It was own dysfunctional version of a security blanket. 

Ariadne’s voice called him back to reality. “Because it really looks like you’re fishing,” she finished, and Arthur dragged his thoughts away from Eames and back to Peter Browning.

“If we were fishing -- and I’m not saying we are,” he said flatly, watching her flush with victory and needing to cut it off at the pass, “The whole point of fishing is that if you’re very quiet and very patient, sometimes you turn something up.”

“But you’re not being patient." Ariadne's tone was that of a parent explaining things for the tenth time to a toddler. "Aren’t we rushing into this?” 

“No,” Arthur said, ignoring the fact that in the whole week they’d held off, he hadn’t accomplished anything more than letting Browning’s security calm down. He didn’t know what they were looking for. He didn’t know what scenario would coax the information out of Browning. He didn’t want to say any of that to Ariadne.

“I was never very good at quiet,” She put in cheerfully. “Like, in class and stuff, I never got into trouble for it but I just wasn’t very good at it. I spoke my mind. A lot.”

Arthur sighed heavily. “Ariadne, that doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows you,” he said.

* * *

Every day, Eames took a cab across the Mass Ave bridge. Every day, he worked hard to ignore the fact that he was only a handful of smoots (364.4 of them, to be precise, although Eames did his best not to be) away from Arthur. He’d left the Holiday Inn behind and hadn’t looked back -- after all, his new room was quite nice. It had a much better bed. There was something about Sheratons -- well, it was neither here nor there. He had a proper bed now, and the room all to himself. A few more weeks and he’d put Boston at his back.

What they’d started out calling a job had degenerated into nothing short of anarchy, and there, at the center of all that chaos, was Arthur. Maybe it was chance, or pure dumb luck, but Eames had always placed a great deal of stock in the subconscious’s ability to wreck a person’s life. After all, Arthur had lived for years at the center of Dominick Cobb’s maelstrom. Maybe he’d forgotten how to function outside of one. 

Whatever the reason, Eames knew he’d been well within his rights to leave when he had. He’d done himself a credit, staying so long to begin with. And he didn’t feel bad for going. Arthur was one of the most pointlessly loyal people Eames knew. Unlike other pointlessly loyal people, he didn’t seem to expect the quality in others. A realistic idealist.

He smashed down on the thoughts, not for the first time. Eames had long considered Arthur something of his own personal boogey man. Arthur, the long-haunting spectre who hung over the wilder aspects of Eames life and criticized him in a dry, ironic tone. For the most part, he put his occasional friend out of his mind and simply went about his business. ‘Nothing gained by lingering on the misdeeds of others,’ his mum had always said. He was mostly sure she’d said it loudly and pointedly so that their near neighbor, Mrs. Cartwright, would take the hint, but it had still stuck with him.

Well. A smile curled his lips. Lingering on the misdeeds of others had served him well, when he came right down to it. He’d made a whole career from it. Not as well as Arthur, but --

Damnit.

Eames didn’t pine. He gathered no moss, lit like a feather on the wind, et cetera, et cetera. He was one of those many things that could not be tied down, and he worked damn hard to stay that way. And yet, here he was, inescapably pining.

He’d shake it off. He always did, and he could not afford for this to be the exception. His reasons for leaving were perfectly sound. He’d made his peace with them, and he was moving on.

You hear that, he told himself sternly. We are moving on.

* * *

Arthur hated going into anything unprepared. In dreamsharing, a notoriously uncertain career field, he’d made a career out of eliminating variables. He’d made an art of it. But now, staring at Peter Browning’s life broken down into tiny table after tiny table, he’d hit a wall.For the first time, it was one he couldn’t get over. 

All he said to Ariadne was, “I think we’re as prepared as we’re going to get.”

She didn’t look very impressed by that -- he remembered again that there was a very sharp young woman under the hipster exterior. The way she’d handled Dom, seen more than any of them who’d known him for years had managed. She wasn’t going to be fooled. 

Arthur felt like he owed her something. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to; he worked too hard to keep the scale balanced the other way. There was no telling when you’d need a favor in this business. But Ariadne had stayed, longer than anyone else. She’d stayed after he’d told her to go. That put her head and shoulders above the rest in the recent comedy of errors that was Arthur’s life. “Fine,” he said, figuring it was the best he could give her. “We’re fishing.”

Ariadne was much too well-bred to grin. It would have been better if she had. At this point, he deserved a little derision. Instead, she took the seat beside him and laid a hand on his arm. “I know you hate going in feeling unprepared,” she said.

Arthur liked well laid plans, liked having a neat set of variables and contingencies for every eventuality. This job had no certainty. He felt out of his depth, and he wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding it. 

Ariadne sat beside him in comfortable silence, not pressing the issue. Usually, the space would be exactly what he needed to settle into the situation and ground himself, but today he felt off. Not just today -- it had been weeks, honestly. He didn’t seem able to find his footing as the world fell away around them. Eames had been right to walk out. This so called plan was nothing short of suicide. Ariadne wasn’t loyal to stay, she was foolish.

For the last few weeks they’d tread carefully around certain subjects, treating them as if they were land mines. As if they might explode with the slightest provocation. It was avoidance, pure and simple. Eventually, though, carefully, Ariadne asked, “What happens if we get into his brain and there’s nothing there?”

After all of it, that was the thought that kept him up. He could pretend otherwise, but hour after hour, he searched, and came up empty. Maybe Browning was a dead end. Maybe they’d been looking in the wrong place from the beginning. The man had proven once already that he took his personal security seriously, that his precautions were more than capable of dealing with an unexpected attack. With Miems dead, he’d probably doubled down. This could very well be their last job, and taking that risk for nothing...

Or maybe his hunch was right, maybe Browning held the last piece of the puzzle, the thing they needed to make sense of this. The only way to tell was to go in. He’d stared at the data until his eyes bled, and found nothing. The only thing he hated more than being unprepared was being unproductive.

He had never done a job with less solid intel than this one. Worse, even, than dying at the hands of Browning’s security team: what if they pulled it off, got in and out, and found nothing? They’d be back at the start with no hint of who was after them, after him, or why.

He felt lost.

Ariadne said nothing, and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. They sat together for a long time, and for the first time in weeks Arthur didn’t stare at his computer screen, trying to force it to reveal answers that weren’t there.

The door of their hotel room opened unexpectedly. Ariadne looking up, her eyes wide with shock, and Arthur reached for his gun. But when the door swung forward, it was a familiar form they saw leaning against the frame. Eames had his arms up in a show of surrender, let the door jamb take most of his weight, and there was an all too familiar grin on his face. He looked between them, the grin only growing larger. Arthur felt a strong impulse to slap him. Eames said, “Honey, I’m home.”

* * *

Eventually, he accepted that he couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t stay away any longer. Eames didn’t like doubts that niggled at the back of his head, and he didn’t like second guessing himself. It didn’t usually happen to him, and he didn’t particularly enjoy that it did, but there were always times when a man had to come to grips with his situation. It was how he dealt with the reality of them that defined him as a person, and made Eames’s job so fun.

His reception was more or less what he’d expected. Arthur greeted him as if he’d never been gone, his tone calm and even as he gave Eames little more than a glance and then turned back to his spreadsheets. Ariadne was decidedly more vocal in her opinion of him -- or rather, less vocal. She pointedly ignored him unless directly asked her a question, and then she answered with a cool, icy tone that ended any conversation he tried to begin. He couldn’t blame her. If someone had walked out on his team, he wouldn’t welcome them back.

“I’m sure she’ll forgive you,” Arthur said in a rare moment when he had deigned to take a break and was actually sipping at a fresh venti coffee. Eames was moving around well enough now that he’d pulled over a chair and sat backwards in it, his forearms resting on the back and his elbows out to the side. The memory of their conversation the last night before he’d left, the halting psychoanalysis, hung heavy between them. Eames certainly wasn’t going to bring it up when it seemed Arthur wasn’t inclined to.

“I know that,” he answered instead, absently, looking not really at Ariadne and not really at Arthur but more at the room in general, as if it might give up the secrets of why he’d reacted so badly in the first place, why he hadn’t been able to leave it alone when he’d tried to leave. He was really worried about Ariadne, it was true. The girl was a rare beast in their trade. She had a good heart, and as fiercely as she valued loyalty, she also valued forgiveness. It wouldn’t be more than a few days before she softened up to him again, and probably less. He could be very charming. “So tell me about your plan. I don’t suppose it’s become any more elegant. You are, as I recall, a great fan of elegance.”

If Arthur was bothered by his return he didn’t show it. It occurred to Eames that maybe he’d misread the situation entirely. It was rare, but it did happen, even to him. Maybe Arthur had been glad to see his back, glad to finally get rid of his teasing and antics. Granted, Arthur had come to him with the job -- Arthur had brought him in -- but Arthur was a professional and Arthur liked to work with the best. Whatever Eames thought he’d felt in the dark, that minute before he’d left, it was possible he was completely mistaken and there was nothing between them. Maybe all Arthur’s claims of hating him were actually true. Maybe he’d been misreading the situation for years. He’d certainly misread plenty else about the point man, or so it seemed.

The time alone had given Eames plenty of time for introspection, and for the first time in -- well, possibly in his entire life -- he felt awkward. There was no other word for it.

“It’s simple,” Arthur said, and Eames was well aware that “simple” and “elegant” weren’t necessarily synonyms. Dominick Cobb, for instance, was a master at making brute force simple. Elegant, too, in his own way. “We’re going under. You and I. Ariadne will stay above in case our friends return, and we’ll go into Browning’s mind and let him show us what he has to show us.”

“Into his mind. You mean it literally this time, don’t you? We won’t just be bringing his subconscious into our dream structure.”

“The only way to avoid his militarized projections,” Arthur responded blithely, as if he wasn’t proposing absolute suicide. Again, Eames felt the desperate gut reaction that had driven him away in the first place, but this time he pushed it down, kept it at check.

He’d read the accounts of early dreamsharing teams, before there’d been an established protocol that held a team member in the roll of the dreamer. Eames had to assume Arthur’d read them too. They were the stuff of nightmares, pardon the pun, for their line of work. Extractors who fell into the mark’s mind, their own militarized projections turning on them and tearing them apart. Untrained dreamers who lost control and plunged entire teams into limbo. They were veritable horror stories for dreamsharers. There was a very good reason they worked by the rules they did.

“Browning’s mind.” It wasn’t so much a question as confirmation. Eames wanted to be sure that he wasn’t inventing this madness. That it was really and truly what Arthur meant.

“He has training, so at least the dream shouldn’t collapse around us.” As reassurances went, it wasn’t a great one. There was still the chance that Browning’s subconscious would discover them as interlopers and crush them, that their own subconscious would reject Browning’s and kick one or all of them out of the dream. It was always harder to occupy a dreamspace as a trained dreamer; exponentially harder if the dreamspace wasn’t built to be shared. “You can’t leave this time.” Arthur’s voice went suddenly sharp and jerked Eames’s attention back to him. “You knew we were planning this, and you came back anyway. You can’t leave.”

He’d never heard that tone from Arthur before. It was high, not just in tone, but in energy. The words almost slurred together in what could be mistaken for panic. “I’m not leaving,” Eames said. He made it as reassuring as possible.

From there, they ended up in Browning’s mind surprisingly fast, all things considered. There were only so many places security could be trusted to stay out of the room, and Pigalle was one of them. Browning just wasn’t that type of gentleman. 

“You’d think, after a major security breach, he’d have a bit more care with his person,” Eames muttered as they slipped the IV into Browning’s wrist.

“I don’t think most people really think about security when they’re in a -- uh --” Ariadne looked around them at the deep red draperies and pillows of the room and the bored looking woman who sat in a corner, her long, sharp nails around a cigarette.

“The words you’re searching for are ‘whore house’,” Arthur offered helpfully, in the same civil and even tone he used to offer observations on everything from her work to the taste of his coffee.

“Use ‘boudoir’ or at least ‘brothel’ if you really must, Arthur. ‘Whore house’ is just so crass,” Eames opined, rolling out to lines from the PASIV and offering one to Arthur like it was a delicacy or fine wine. The point man accepted it with a very brief smile as he turned up his sleeve.

“I hate to ask,” Ariadne said nervously, fiddling with the ends of her scarf, “But considering we paid her to betray Browning, are we really that sure that you two going under and leaving your bodies here is, uh, safe? No offense,” she added hurriedly, and the woman gave her a negligent wave of long fingers and her cigarette.

“The things you say about my friends, Ariadne,” Eames pouted.

“We’re perfectly safe,” Arthur assured her, offering no more explanation as he slipped the line into his wrist. Each of them had a chair, set back to back, and Ariadne would be able to knock them both over if they needed to kick out early for any reason. Otherwise, the program was set to run for an half an hour. An unwieldy six hours of dream time for them, and plenty of time for Charlene, as she’d introduced herself, to convince Browning he’d had such a remarkable time that he’d literally blacked out, and have him go again.

Eames tipped his head back so he could say, “See you underneath, darling,” and then Arthur reached out to start the flow of Somnacin. Their eyes closed in the same minute.

* * *

Above, and suddenly much more alone, Ariadne glanced nervously at Charlene, who unwound from her seat like a cat and went to the table to light another cigarette.

“He's a jackass,” she offered by way of explanation. “He treats the girls here like toys and he tips badly. And I owe Eames one. Is this your first time in France?”

“No, I came to school here.” Curiosity burned, but it was generally better not to ask how Eames got favors out of whores. Ariadne had only done two jobs with the man and even she knew that.

Charlene laughed. “Paris, je t’aime,” she said.

* * *

Eames came to in a bathroom. A hotel bathroom, if he was one to judge. He thought he was, having lived out of hotels most of his life. The plan, as it went, was simple, and elegant enough, in its own way. Between their extensive research into Browning’s past, both of them were (in theory) well equipped to deal with whatever his subconscious gave them. Eames would forge whoever they needed, Arthur would stay in the background as much as possible, and they’d dig the answer out of the man as quick as they could, before anything had a chance to go to hell.

They were seated on the floor beside the tub, and they looked at eachother, then at the young boy before them, up to his stomach in lukewarm water and bubbles. Projection? Arthur mouthed. Or perhaps a young Browning.

The question was answered for them as a familiar voice bellowed from the next room, “Mary? What’s taking so long?”

There was only one significant Mary in Browning’s past, as far as Arthur knew -- a nanny Maurice Fischer had hired for his son to keep the boy out of the way. Browning had slept with her on and off, from the time Robert had been about this age until he’d been shipped to boarding school at eleven.

As forgeries went, it was sloppy and slap-dash, but he didn’t have time for perfection. Eames did the best with what he had, summoning what he remembered of Mary Bridge and trusting on the natural feel of the dream to cover any mistakes. Just in time -- the projection of Robert Fischer giggled as he changed, as Peter Browning entered the bathroom.

“For God’s sake, Mary, the limo’s already here. I told you to have him ready on time.”

Mary and Peter had probably been more parents to Robert than the absent Fischers, Eames reflected, and he put all the exasperation of a parent by proxy into his tone as he replied, “And how was I supposed to do that when he was with the tutor all afternoon? I can’t fit more minutes into the day than there already are.” 

Browning through up his hands in the motion of a man who knew he had been beaten in a pointless argument. “Just get him out of there and into something presentable,” he said, his eyes going sharp as they focused on Arthur. “Who’s that?”

“My cousin from Sydney,” Eames said smoothly, adding with the slightly harsh tone of a woman who felt ignored, “You remember me telling you about him.”

Arthur, thank Mary and Christ, didn’t try to fake an Australian accent. He only raised a hand and looked appropriately terrified by Browning’s presence.

“Hurry up,” Browning huffed, and left the room.

Eames turned back to find Arthur elbow deep in water, his sleeves rolled out of the way. He had one hand firmly on young Robert’s stomach, to keep him from squirming away, and he was rinsing soap out of the boy’s hair with a pitcher.

“Bathing children? That isn’t a skill I’d have associated with you, Arthur! You have hidden depths!” Eames was clearly delighted as he shook out a towel, holding it for the boy.

“I have nephews,” Arthur snapped, then stopped. Dumbfounded, perhaps? Eames had never heard Arthur speak about his family before, and there were good reasons, in their business, to limit the information you shared. Personal details could always be used against you in a dream, case in point. Arthur was the best at maintaining the barrier between his personal and professional lives had always been an easy one for Arthur to erect and maintain, but that confession had simply slipped out. Eames simply bulldozed on, pretending no to notice.

“Go put clothes on,” he instructed the kid, and Robert Fischer left the towel in Arthur’s hands, running naked through the hotel suite toward the clothes laid out on the bed. “Just look what he grew into.” Eames sounded almost fond.

“It’s not really him,” Arthur reminded him sharply. “It’s Browning’s projection of him as a child.”

Eames raised an eyebrow and countered, “You think it isn’t accurate? Given what you know of him now, you don’t think this is the only affection he ever saw?”

Arthur, about to respond, clamped down as Browning re-entered the room. “Thank you,” he said to Eames-as-Mary. “I imagine he won’t last more than a few hours. I’ll try to convince his father to send him back early. Do you mind staying around?”

“Of course not,” Eames slid back into character smoothly, letting Browning come a little too close into his space.

“And one way or another, I imagine I’ll be seeing you later,” Browning murmured intimately before stepping back. Eames went the safe route of saying nothing, only hiding a smile, and Browning gave him one last heated look before stepping back and going to corral the youngster running through the suite.

Eames withheld his laughter until they heard the door of the suite shut, and then it burst forth. “Ibelieve if you weren’t here he’d have kissed me!” he cried. “Lord, Arthur, thank you.” The Peter Browning of their present and this one looked more or less the same, so he thought he was on stable enough ground. If Arthur thought it strange, seeing something so raucous and completely Eames come out of another body, he gave no indication. He’d seen it before. But now Eames found himself looking for a reaction -- maybe because he knew what Arthur’s cheek felt like under his lips. 

“It can’t be this easy,” Arthur said. They were alone in Browning’s suite, only an hour in, with seemingly plenty of time to find whatever it was Browning had to tell him.

“Don’t question our good fortune, Arthur dear,” Eames scolded. “Now, would you like to crack the room safe, or shall I?”

“Aren’t you going to change back?” Arthur asked. He poked through cabinets and closets, ignoring the obvious safe in the front hall. He pulled away the mini-fridge and gave a small hum of victory, revealing the lock-box behind it. 

“Browning’s subconscious, I’m not sure I dare. He sees me as Mary now -- we’ll have to wait for him to shift the dreamscape,” Eames murmured in response. “Maybe I should put some lingerie on under this getup, though, keep him interested when he comes back. Give you more time.”

Arthur chose to ignore Eames’s comment, concentrating instead on the task before him. Hotel safes were easy to crack, but in Browning’s uneducated mind they were perfectly secure. Arthur struggled with the lock before the tumblers finally aligned, and he yanked it open.

Eames looked over his shoulder and gave a long, low whistle. “God, I hate working with amateurs,” he muttered. A man like Browning had a great many secrets to keep hidden, and this was his mind. Browning had stashed it all. Whole sheaves of paper tumbled from the safe, a cascade that seemed much too large for the space within. 

“This is what happens when we don’t have an extractor to tailor the dream,” Arthur reminded him. Calmly, he handed Eames a stack of papers. “Better start reading if we’re to find what we need.”

“This is your fault. You wanted something to go wrong,” Eames told him as he accepted the stack.

It felt filthy, pouring through Browning’s secrets this way. Eames tossed aside a memo, an honest to God typewritten memo, in which Browning confessed his early experiments with masturbation. The deluge of information was everything Browning wanted to conceal, arranged via his own priorities. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of it (Arthur raised his eyes and held up a sheet of insider trading tips, but filed them away as they weren’t what he was after) was only trivial.

It took another four hours as they scanned papers, each keeping an ear toward the hallway. “I think I’ve got something here,” Eames murmured, holding onto the page he was reading and passing Arthur a folder. Arthur set down what he was reading -- a catalogue of things Browning had blamed on his sister as children -- and looked instead at the paperwork Eames had found. Tax documents for RPF Enterprises. “Do those look a bit unusual to you, darling?” Eames kept his tone casual, because of course, he’d already found the answer, and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Arthur didn’t rise to the bait. He simply frowned as he scanned the documents, until he reached page three, deductions and write-offs. RPF had a government contract. They were all going to get fabulously rich on the backs of the American taxpayers. So why was their engineering department claiming a loss in the third quarter?

“Do you have payroll, Eames?” Arthur’s voice grew more urgent, and Eames dug for the requested sheet of paper.

“What are you looking for?” Eames sat back on his heels and simply watched Arthur’s eyebrows move over each line of text. He knew what Arthur looked like when he was on to something.

“Three names.” Arthur marked two with his fingers, looking up at Eames. “This explains why they didn’t know who you were,” he said finally, flatly, because it was done now. There was no point in fighting it.

“Friends of yours?” Eames asked casually, taking the file and trading Arthur a gun for it. He read the names again to make sure, but they meant nothing to him. 

“Talk above,” Arthur said, grimly, and shot himself out. Eames followed a moment later, and Ariadne was sitting exactly where they’d left her barely twenty minutes ago, wringing her hands fretfully. 

“Did you find it?” she asked.

Eames looked to Arthur, waiting on the answer as well. After a moment, Arthur said, his tone flat, “Six months ago, RPF Enterprises acquired what was left of Cobol Engineering. Eames, pay the lady and let’s go.”

“Happy to, darling,” Eames murmured smoothly, with a brevity he didn’t feel. He did, and then they left.

* * *

Now that he knew where to look, the trail was easy to uncover.

It had been buried, well buried, and Arthur was sure more than ever they were on the right lead. Cobol had been bait from the beginning, to lead them to Saito, but the small engineering firm didn’t know that. They’d been in Fischer’s pocket even then, he remembered. The corners of his lips turned down. 

First, they’d come after him. He was the most active, the most visible, in the dreamsharing world. By far the easiest to find. Still, just in case, he put in a call to Dom. Left word for Tadashi, if they followed the trail that far. They already had Nash. He didn’t offer Ariadne or Eames the chance to leave again, even though they were cleared now. Cobol didn’t want them. Or rather, Ray Freis and and Alfred Dalton wanted didn’t want them. 

Neither of his partners (he tried not to add “in crime,” not even in his head) were making noise about leaving, either. Ariadne had simply asked, “What do you need?”and gone to work, and Eames --

Eames was watching him. He was too good for Arthur to ever catch him at it, but he’d turn around two or three times a day, sure of the feeling of eyes on his back, only to see Eames pointedly staring at something else.

It got, somehow, to be something like a game -- could he watch Eames before Eames watched him? And he found himself studying the other man, observing the new, slightly uneven gait of his walk, learning the way Eames held his hips when his knee was aching.

It wasn’t like him to daydream at the office, but he found Eames made a much better resting place for his eyes than a computer screen or spreadsheet. He thought better staring at the other man’s desk than he did reading and reading his notebooks. 

Inception was out. On that, all three of them agreed. It would be foolish to even try on two marks with only the three of them. What had worked once on Fischer was too slapdash and haphazard to work again, especially rushed together and affecting two minds in concert. Easier to face them head on and take out the problem directly. That left two options: paying them off, or convincing them the grudge was too dangerous to hold on to.

“I don’t think money would work. Not on men like these.” Arthur, who’d been staring at Eame’s lips, jerked his eyes upward and forced them to stay there. “It’s been more than a year by now, and they’re richer at RPF than they ever were, struggling to compete. If they haven’t given up yet, they aren’t going to.”

Arthur made a point of not questioning Eames when he was right, which, infuriatingly, was all too often. Especially when it came down to psychology. Besides, he hadn’t really thought a payoff would do the trick. It had never been about money with Cobol -- they’d never been paid for job, reimbursed them for expenses. Money had long ago stopped fueling the men’s rage.

Ariadne wrinkled up her nose in confusion. “So if we’re not going to do this in the dream world, and we’re not paying them off, what are we going to do?”

“I’m disappointed in you, Ariadne!” Eames slung an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in. “You were from Chicago, weren’t you? I’d thought you lot were trained in the fine art of shaking down from a very early age.”

Ariadne rolled her eyes and shrugged out from under Eames’s arm, sticking her tongue out at him. “And people like you are the reason we’ve got that reputation,” she countered.

Arthur cleared his throat to get both of their attention. “As adorable as you both are, I believe we have some threatening to attend to.”

* * *

As resolutions went, it was almost anticlimactic.

Eames sat in the poorly structured hotel chairs with his feet up on whatever was nearest -- the bed, the nightstand, occasionally Arthur -- while the other man traced bank and tax records. The third in their party mostly sat across the room from them, bouncing a rubber ball off the ceiling when she wasn’t making Starbucks runs. Without discussing it, Eames and Arthur had arrived at an accord. Neither of them was eager to put a weapon in Ariadne’s hand, and there was no need for architecture in this. Taking their targets below would take the sting out of what Arthur was calling their ‘civilized conversation’. Dreaming removed the immediacy of the threat. Dream pain, while intense, didn't last. If they failed and were caught out, it would only fuel the men’s rage further. If they succeeded, the best they could hope for was a sense of aversion when the men thought about them. 

So Eames polished guns and Arthur traced ghosts through cyber networks. It was what Arthur did best, after all. He discovered that the third major shareholder in Cobol, Michael Woodruff, had employed his golden parachute while they were planning inception. It was mostly in tatters by that time, but he’d still done better than Freis and Dalton. By the time Fischer Morrow was gone and RPF came along to buy out Cobol, the two remaining owners were mired in debt and looking at prosecution on a dozen antitrust violations.

“They should be thanking you,” Eames pointed out practically. Ariadne was out, and he was working on bringing a shine to Arthur’s glock. “If you hadn’t ruined Fischer Morrow they’d be in minimum security prisons right now.”

“I’ll be sure to point that out to them, Eames, thank you.” Arthur swiveled his chair to face Eames. “What are you doing?”

There were some things that really didn’t need to have words put to them, and Eames rather thought cleaning weaponry was one of them. Under what other circumstances did you field strip a gun and attack it with a barrel brush?

His thoughts must have been transparent enough for Arthur to guess at, because the other man rolled his eyes. “I’ll rephrase. Do you, in fact, live in a parallel dimension to this one, a dimension in which I do not properly care for my guns?”

Eames answered him with complete sincerity and a glint of mischief in his arms. “Darling,” he assured Arthur, “I believe in theoretical physics and every dimension that implies, including the ones where we are having this conversation exactly right now and the ones where we’re dancing monkeys in the circus, but I do not believe in any of those dimensions you’ve ever in your life handled a weapon irresponsibly. Not even a dreamt one. Does that tell you anything?”

“It tells me you know fuck all about theoretical physics,” Arthur told him very seriously.

Eames wondered if, in those other dimensions, Arthur then leaned in then and kissed him.

It wasn’t anything like he expected a kiss with Arthur to be, and that shouldn’t have surprised him. He had never been very good at anticipating what Arthur would or wouldn’t do, for all that he complained the other man had no capacity for creativity. Obviously, he’d been underestimating the point man greatly.

Arthur’s lips were as perfectly kempt as the rest of him, soft and so well-moisturized that they felt as full as Eames’s own, and surprisingly uncertain as they pressed to Eames’s. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that he was Arthur’s first, or that the other man was lacking in any kind of experience. Lust just wasn’t Arthur’s arena. They did the same thing, but Eames was the one who dove in and got his hands dirty. Arthur did it from a distance, with computers and moleskines and careful logic.

It took everything in Eames not to take both their weight with his bad knee and throw Arthur to the bed. In this, like in so many things, he treated Arthur like a cat -- let the other man explore at his own pace, let him bring himself to Eames when he was ready. Everything Eames did was soft and slow, a mirror of what Arthur had done first, to sink them into the kiss.

It only lasted a minute and then Arthur pulled back, every hair, as ever, in place. Eames felt, and knew he looked, like someone had put a fist in his gut.

After that, it was child’s play to make their way to Guatemala, where the remnants of Cobol were developing arid-environment reservoirs.

* * *

Arthur rarely acted on impulse because it left him feeling itchy, like he knew he’d left something unfinished but couldn’t remember what it was. He felt it as they boarded the plane. He didn’t like it any better this time.

As with every job, when this one started, he built a wall between himself and the other members of the team. Though they were all on the same plane, they’d all booked at different times from different IP addresses, even using different websites. Arthur carefully didn’t look as Ariadne as he took his seat five rows up from her. He very carefully didn’t look at Eames as he passed through first class (“Arthur, I had _surgery_.”) because if he looked at Eames he’d be thinking about his lips. Now was not the time to think about Eames’s lips, or stupid things that he’d done on impulse.

The flight to Guatemala was as uneventful as any 3,000 mile trip could be. Better by far than their  
haphazard flight a few months ago. It was almost embarrassingly easy to infiltrate security in the hotel Freis and Dalton were staying at. Arthur made a note to address the issue with management at a later date.

Although both men had been saved from criminal prosecution when they were acquired by RPF, they were little more than reasonably powerful middleman in the eyes of the company. Neither had bothered to procure outside security, and what the company provided was there for the company’s property. Proprietary research was well guarded. Not particularly important project-heads were not. They let themselves into each of the other men’s rooms with the master key.

“Mr. Dalton. I think it’s time we spoke.”

* * *

Down the hall, Eames imagined Arthur having a very similar conversation with his victim.

Good intimidation was like blackmail. No one _liked_ being forced into a corner -- you had to hope they liked being beaten bloody less. It took a delicate touch, to remind them just how gracious you were being instead of pissing them off more. Arthur, luckily, had that touch. One of his many skills. Eames, with his great mastery of psychology, had it in spades. He didn’t know what was happening down the hall. He assumed Arthur was leaning a bit more heavily on threats of great violence with Dalton, but that was to be expected. They were trying to kill him, after all. A man took that personally. 

For his part, Eames had Freis sitting on the bed and nicely warmed up. Once the other man had come around to the fact that Eames had broken into his room and wasn’t leaving, he was rather reasonable about listening. Wise decision, despite Eames’s easy manner. Eames had been taught never to bring a gun unless he was ready to use it, and he was willing to bet Freis knew that. Freis and Dalton wouldn’t be the first corpses they’d left behind them, and really, if they weren’t willing to cooperate, fleeing disinterested Guatemalan law enforcement was a much more appealing prospect than fleeing vindictive men with practically endless pockets. 

“Out of curiosity, what’s to stop me from taking up the hunt again the moment you leave this room? I have you this close already -- I imagine it wouldn’t be hard to track you,” Freis said.

“Oh, you’re probably right.” Eames had propped himself against the wall, putting them a conversational distance apart, and he shrugged fluidly. “But thanks to your little game, I ended up with a shattered kneecap, and then I had to haul myself all the way here to discuss it with you.” He leaned in, bringing their faces close together. “Hauling is hard with a shattered kneecap. I’d hate for you to drag me back here and have to find out how hard.”

He thought his point had come across.

* * *

Arthur left Dalton tied to his desk chair in the middle of the room. It would take him awhile to work himself free, but the knots weren’t too tight. Provided he didn’t give up and wait for housekeeping to find him, he’d be loose in a few hours -- and they’d be somewhere over Mexico.

“Enjoy yourself?” Eames was waiting for him outside, a cigarette at his lips and his shoulders braced against a wall. Arthur knew he only indulged after a job was completed.

“Not particularly,” Arthur replied and pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

Ariadne was waiting for them down the street at the hotel. He could see her from here, but he wasn’t in a rush to meet her. Not everything had to end with gun battles and limbo; sometimes it was quiet discussions and cigarettes.

“They’ll come after you eventually.” Eames kept pace with him, slow and easy, looking past Ariadne at the bustling street. “I think we have them properly terrified for now, but the mind won’t hold on to that fear. Six months or a year from now they’ll be hot for you again.” As an afterthought, he added, “And me, now.”

“Six months is a long time in our business,” Arthur said. It wasn’t disagreement -- he was sure Eames was right; he’d had the same feeling from Dalton as he was sure Eames must have gotten from Freis. But he couldn’t live his life in fear that they’d pop up again. They weren’t the only enemies he had. He was better them. He just had to stay ahead.

“Not that long if you keep letting yourself get bogged down in these ridiculous jobs,” Eames said practically. “Honestly, Arthur, for the responsible one, you seem to get into all the trouble. I thought it was Cobb, at first, but I’ve begun to revise my estimate.”

“Maybe I should stay close to you, then, if I can’t be trusted on my own.” Arthur didn’t look at him, didn’t put any weight on the words, but he could feel Eames’s eyes as the other man stared him down, searching.

“Maybe you should,” Eames said, just as carelessly.

They reached Ariadne.

**Author's Note:**

> Work and Chapter titles taken from Eilen Jewell's "Where They Never Say Your Name"


End file.
